Awards To Honour Breaking News

The finalists for the Online Journalism Awards have been announced and a total of ten sites have been nominated for breaking news coverage.

Award nominees compete in categories with websites of a similar size and this year sees three titles up for the breaking news prize for a small site.

They are: The Daily Astorian for coverage of the Gearhart Plane Crash; The Desert Sun for the Desert Hot Springs Gang Sweep; Pressconnects.com/Press & Sun-Bulletin for the Massacre on Front Street.



In the medium site category, the shortlist of four includes LasVegasSun.com for coverage of a snowstorm and the Dallas Morning News for its breaking news reports on the collapse of an American football training stadium.



Finally, the nominees in the large site category for breaking news are: The BBC for the Mumbai terrorist attacks; the New York Times for the plane crash on the Hudson river; chron.com for Hurricane Ike.



Run by the Online News Association, the awards also honour investigative journalism, multimedia, blogging, video journalism and general excellence – the full shortlist is available to view in the press release.

“We were regularly awed, inspired and delighted by the quality and innovation evident online today,” said Anthony Moor, co-chair of the awards committee.

The winners will be announced in October at the 2009 ONA Conference.