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Online Journalism News

Washingtonpost.com wins Emmy

Posted: 26/09/06 By: Oliver Luft
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Washingtonpost.com has won the inaugural broadband video news Emmy for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

The first-ever Emmy for outstanding individual achievement in content for non-traditional delivery platform was presented to Travis Fox, washingtonpost.com's senior video journalist, for his films on the fallout of the disaster that hit Louisiana and Mississippi, in late August last year.

The award was made at the National Television Academy's 27th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards ceremony held in New York last night.

Working alone Fox used a small digital camera to make four films documenting the lives of residents in New Orleans as they tried to come to terms with the scale of what happened and piece together what remained of their neighbourhoods.

Fox told Journalism.co.uk the films avoided the traditional presenter driven format of TV news.

They instead adopted a more subtle approach using the voice of the subjects to more effectively drive the individual stories.

"Working for the website we have to always take risks and find new ways to tell stories," said Fox.

"I started doing video in 1999 but no-one was paying attention then, which was good for us, because it has been building slowly allowing us to try different things. Now we have six or seven video journalists doing what I do."

He added: "This award's good not only for the Post but for the industry to let the public know that this kind of high quality video journalism is accessible online."

Other nominated documentaries were produced by the websites of the New York Times, MTV and National Geographic.

Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com, said "Beyond the recognition of a great body of work on an incredibly important story, the award is an affirmation of the power and potential of multimedia storytelling on the web."