KobreGuide Award Winners Announced for Best Videojournalism of 2009

After sorting through hundreds of excellent finalists, we're happy to announce the winners of the first annual KobreGuide Awards for Best Videojournalism for 2009 -- in 28 categories.

Grand prize goes to New York Times videojournalist Erik Olsen (pictured), who we're delighted to anoint "Videojournalist of the Year." The impressive quantity and quality of his work serves as a beacon to his professional colleagues and to videojournalism students around the globe.

As you can readily tell from Olsen's videos, which are frequently selected for inclusion on KobreGuide.com, they represent excellent video technique, excellent journalism, and excellent storytelling. He has covered stories from Alaska to Haiti, and has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to tackle both serious issues and lighthearted fare.

Olsen has been a New York Times videojournalist since 2005. He helps select others' online videos to showcase on the Times' invaluable Lens blog every Friday. Previously he served as an off-air producer at ABC News, where he developed several of the first Web-only video shows for a major news organization. He contributed a feature article, "From TV News Shooter to One-Man-Band VJ," to the special videojournalism edition of DigitalJournalist.org, which was guest-edited by the KobreGuide staff.

Olsen's prize is one week's lodging in a charming village in Provence, France, where he says he has yet to visit -- so we look forward to seeing visual documentation of his vacation there!

KobreGuide Awards recipients represent a diverse array of journalism Websites, including the Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, St. Petersburg Times, Kansas City Star, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Reading Eagle, and Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Here are some of the top prizes, below. A complete list of the winning videos can be accessed on KobreGuide.com :
http://www.kobreguide.com/content/First_Annual_KobreGuide_Awards_Prizewinners

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VIDEOJOURNALIST OF THE YEAR:
Erik Olsen
(New York Times)

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BEST VIDEO:
Molly's Run
(Las Vegas Review-Journal)
A 52-year-old woman takes on the 131-mile Badwater Ultramarathon through Death Valley in 125-degree heat -- "the world's toughest footrace."
Video by Justin Yurkanin
http://kobreguide.com/content/Mollys_Run

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BEST VIDEO PACKAGE:
Fallout: Brookhaven
(Newsday)
Survivors from an H-bomb test are sent back to radioactive Rondelap island to be used as guinea pigs for research. A 9-part investigative series.
Produced by Thomas Maier and John Paraskevas
http://kobreguide.com/content/Fallout_The_Legacy_of_Brookhaven_Lab

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BEST AUDIO SLIDESHOW:
Battle of the Blonds
(Los Angeles Times)
Two Marilyn Monroe impersonators compete for attention on Hollywood Boulevard.
Photography and Audio by Mel Melcon
http://kobreguide.com/content/Battle_of_the_Blonds

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BEST STUDENT PROJECT (SOLO):
Neverland
(Soulalpha.com)
Heartwrenching stories of Appalachian women who are struggling to escape from tragic lives of poverty, domestic violence and substance abuse.
Video by Yanina Manolova
http://kobreguide.com/content/Neverland

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BEST STUDENT PROJECT (GROUP):
Living Galapagos
(UNC-Chapel Hill)
Student-produced collection of multimedia stories explores the balance between man and nature in the Galapagos Islands. (UNC-Chapel Hill)
Executive Producer: Pat Davison
Multimedia Project by UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Journalism & Mass Communication:
http://www.kobreguide.com/content/Living_Galapagos


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BEST STORYTELLING:
Letters from Iwo Jima
(New York Times)
WWII vet Frank Hobbs seized an envelope from a fallen Japanese soldier and returned its contents to the man's daughters ... 65 years later.
By Erik Olsen & Lizette Alvarez
http://kobreguide.com/content/The_Letter_from_Iwo_Jima

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BEST ADVOCACY VIDEOJOURNALISM:
Nicholas D. Kristof
(New York Times)

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BEST HUMOR VIDEOS:
Joel Stein
(Time)

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A complete list of 2009 KobreGuide Award winners can be found here:
http://www.kobreguide.com/content/First_Annual_KobreGuide_Awards_Prizewinners

Congratulations to all winners.

KobreGuide's Top 25 for Oct. '09

Here are the top 25 most popular video stories on KobreGuide.com for the month of October 2009.

For the past couple months, we listed only recently published stories, since it seemed that these "best-seller lists" become self-prophetic -- by clicking on popular stories, it makes them seem even more popular. But then we found that the top of the list remained pretty much the same anyway, owing in part to the fact that many of these stories are linked from high-traffic Websites.

In any case, their mere presence on KobreGuide in the first place attests to their high quality, and that they merit your attention.

As always, they span an array of topics and themes, and originate from a broad spectrum of media outlets. Their tone ranges from comic to tragic.

To varying degrees, they all inform and entertain, and represent the cutting edge of visual aesthetics, high journalism standards, and good storytelling.

KobreGuide strives to showcase topical stories, but gravitates towards evergreen features, not news.

So if you missed any of these the first time around, they should all still feel fresh and not outdated. Now's your chance to catch them, and we hope you do.

1. Pit Bulls: Companions or Killers?

2. Bolivia's Women Wrestlers

3. Acid Attacks

4. Being a Black Man

5. Conjoined Twins (pictured)

6. The Sand Dancer

7. Dangerous Encounters with Brady Barr

8. Being Aron Ralston

9. Ana's Story

10. Turtle Man

11.Ian Fisher: American Soldier

12. Burned in the War

13. Living Galapagos

14. A Hendrix Experience in Hollywood

15. Hungry: Living with Prader-Willi Syndrome

16. Mending Broken Hearts

17. Talking to the Taliban

18. Zora Neale Hurston's Hometown Legacy

19. Train Jumping: A Desperate Journey

20. 85 and Still Kicking

21. Trapped: Mental Illness in America's Prisons

22. Weegee

23. A Place for Jani

24. The Girl in the Window

25. Prison Overcrowding

P.S. Here's a statistic we're happy to share. In the year since KobreGuide launched (in October 2008), our audience and page views have steadily increased 10 to 20% per month.

We've still got a ways to go to achieve the kind of traffic enjoyed by the major media institutions we showcase and champion, but we're enthused to know that the receptive audience for videojournalism that we originally targeted does in fact exist.

In fact, all signs point to nonfiction video stories becoming a bigger and more potent force in the near future, and we're proud to say that KobreGuide has been ahead of the curve in recognizing this. We'll hope you'll stay with us for the fascinating journey ahead.