Online Videojournalism Awards Presented

Congrats to all winners of Online Journalism Awards, presented this weekend at a banquet in D.C. by the Online News Association.

Per usual, all the videojournalism winners were showcased at the time of their original publication on KobreGuide to the Web's Best Videojournalism -- the place to catch award-winning work months before contest judges officially acclaim it!

Online Video Journalism, Large Site
The Toronto Star
William and the Windmill

Online Video Journalism, Medium Site
The Las Vegas Sun and the Greenspun Media Group
Bottoming Out

Online Video Journalism, Small Site
Yale Environment 360
Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining

Online Video Journalism, Student
Knight Center for International Media, School of Communication, University of Miami
My Story, My Goal

The student award went to fourteen University of Miami multimedia graduate students, who teamed with students from seven Knight Center for International Media partner schools in Africa and Asia "to tell stories that attempt to personalize the United Nations Millennium Development Goals."

Working with Tom Kennedy, Knight Center Professional-in-Residence, each team found personal local stories that shed light and insight on critical global issues, including poverty, maternal health, environmental sustainability, universal education, gender equality, HIV AIDS and children's health.

In addition to seven individual mini-documentaries on each of those topics, focusing on seven people from seven African and Asian countries, the project includes a 27-minute documentary, "This is My Goal" (pictured above).

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We previously posted a salute to OJA finalists here (9/29).

To see all the OJA prizewinners in all categories, go here.

Africa's Climate Conflicts: New Video by Yale Environment 360 and MediaStorm

MediaStorm scores again, with a multimedia project produced for Yale Environment 360, a publication of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

It's called "When The Water Ends: Africa’s Climate Conflicts."

The 16-minute video is about nomadic herdsmen in Kenya and Ethiopia who, because of climate changes that have depleted water supplies, now battle and kill each other over water and grass.

It's "a tale that many climate scientists say will be increasingly common in the 21st century and beyond — how worsening drought in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere will pit group against group, nation against nation."

But the story recounted in “When the Water Ends” is also about how deforestation and land degradation — due in large part to population pressures — are exacting a toll on impoverished farmers and nomads as the earth grows ever more barren...

The herdsmen who speak in this video are caught up in forces over which they have no real control. Although they have done almost nothing to generate the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, they may already be among its first casualties.

According to MediaStorm's site:

Photojournalist Evan Abramson, 32, spent two months traveling and living among these tribal communities. "When the Water Ends" is Abramson's first multimedia piece, and he captured several voices and communities during his reporting. He shot over 10,000 photographs and interviewed several tribesmen and leaders from local NGOs. Yale Environment 360 commissioned the project and asked MediaStorm to produce a video that also included interviews from the scientific community.

Watch it here.

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Want to learn how to produce multimedia the MediaStorm way? Enroll in one of their 2011 New York workshops.

* March 5-11, 2011 (application deadline January 7, 2011)
* July 23-29, 2011 (application deadline May 27, 2011)
* November 12-18, 2011 (application deadline September 16, 2011)

Over the course of a week, participants will work in three-person teams, reporting and editing in collaboration with a seasoned multimedia professional to produce a multimedia project for distribution across multiple platforms. Each team will produce a professional-quality, ready-for-publication multimedia story.

Go here for more info.

Webby Nominees for Video Documentary

The 14th Annual Webby Award nominees have been announced, in a broad array of categories, incorporating fiction, non-fiction and everything in between. The ones that most closely resemble videojournalism can be found in the DOCUMENTARY and NEWS & POLITICS subcategories of the ONLINE FILM & VIDEO category.

The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Established in 1996 during the Web's infancy, the Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which includes an Executive 750-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities, and Associate Members who are former Webby Award Winners and Nominees and other Internet professionals.

As always, many of the nominees have previously been showcased on KobreGuide to the Web's Best Videojournalism.

DOCUMENTARY: INDIVIDUAL EPISODE

A Schoolgirl's Odyssey (New York Times)

Driftless: Stories from Iowa (MediaStorm)
(On KobreGuide: http://kobreguide.com/content/Driftless_Stories_from_Iowa )

In Silence: Maternal Mortality in India (Human Rights Watch)

Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining (Yale Environment 360)
(On KobreGuide: http://kobreguide.com/content/Leveling_Appalachia )

Waterlife (National Film Board of Canada)

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NEWS & POLITICS: INDIVIDUAL EPISODE

Alabama's Homeboys (Los Angeles Times)
(On KobreGuide: http://kobreguide.com/content/Alabamas_Homeboys)

Gun Markets of Pakistan (VBS.TV)

Silverton Saves Its Paper (AARP Bulletin Today)
(On KobreGuide: http://kobreguide.com/content/Silverton_Saves_Its_Paper )

Toxic Waters (NY Times)
(On KobreGuide: http://kobreguide.com/content/Tainted_Tap_Water )

Will This Man Be Able To Keep His Home? (Huffington Post Investigative Fund)

The Webby Awards presents two honors in every category -- The Webby Award and The People's Voice Award -- in each of its four entry types: Websites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video and Mobile Web. Members of The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences select the nominees for both awards in each category, as well as the winners of the Webby Awards. However, you, the online community, determine the winners of The People's Voice by voting for the nominated work that you believe to be the best in each category.

You can vote for your favorites in the People's Voice awards at http://webby.aol.com/ .

Congrats to all nominees. Webby Awards will be presented during Internet Week in New York, June 7-14, 2010.

Video Wins National Magazine Award

Clipped from: e360.yale.edu by clp.ly

For the first time, National Magazine Awards were presented for "Digital Media," including an unprecedented Best Video award, which went to Yale Environment 360 (an online magazine) for “Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining,” co-produced by MediaStorm.

The video was one of five finalists in the video category that included National Geographic and The New York Times Style Magazine. Directed by Chad Stevens, the 20-minute video depicts the enormous environmental and human costs of mountaintop removal mining. The practice, which involves blasting the tops off mountains to get at the coal seams below, has destroyed or severely damaged more than a million acres of Appalachian forest, buried nearly 2,000 miles of streams in mining debris, contaminated water supplies, and driven some local residents from their homes.

Published at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, Yale Environment 360 features reporting, commentary, and analysis on global environmental issues. It has been recognized for digital and editorial excellence, including winning a 2009 Online Journalism Award for Best Specialty Site Journalism.

Presented by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, the winners of the Digital Ellies (so called for the Alexander Calder stabile “Elephant” trophy, pictured) were led by New York and National Geographic, both with two awards.

New York won General Excellence, Digital Media, and Multimedia Feature and Package; National Geographic won Photography, Digital Media, and Community. The other award winners were Billboard.com, Foreign Policy, Men’s Health, Sports Illustrated, Virginia Quarterly Review and three online-only publications: Epicurious, Tablet Magazine and Yale Environment 360.

Stats: 118 magazine Websites and online-only magazines submitted 420 entries, of which 37 were nominated. Six online-only magazines were nominated: Epicurious, The Daily Beast, LIFE.com, Slate, Tablet Magazine and Yale Environment 360.

LINKS:

* "Leveling Appalachia" on Yale Environment 360.

* "Leveling Appalachia" on KobreGuide

* National Magazine Awards winners for Digital Media 2010 (press release)

* National Magazine Awards winners for Digital Media 2010 (complete list)