The shortlist for this year's NetMedia awards, which I've been helping judge, is published today. The gongs will be handed out on July 4 in London, at a ceremony that (like the Webby awards last week) will be rather smaller than in previous years (disclaimer: I didn't mark any Guardian Unlimited entries, and didn't know in which categories GU had entries). The BBC's sprawling online empire is likely to dominate proceedings: I count 18 shortlisted entries across 12 categories. The Guardian, which scooped an armful last year, has four entries in the final cut, in four categories.
Of the judging: I'll expand on this another time. Each judge was given a basket of entries to mark, and there was some very good journalism on show in the submissions I looked at. The examples of really good online storytelling, however, were much harder to find, bar one or two crackers now on the shortlist. Four prizes won't be awarded this year, because none of the entries made the standard: nobody will get the outstanding contribution to online journalism in Europe prize, or gongs for financial reporting, best use of mobile connectivity or weblog of the year.
