The winners of the tenth annual Webby Awards have been announced, and, rather depressingly, many of the nominees and winners across the wide range of categories are corporate sites. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t very many worthy sites in the bunch -- I’m pretty much madly in love with everything the BBC does online, for one -- but I would really like to see more recognition by the Webbys of the fact that what really drives the Web is individual effort -- the sites with multimillion-dollar backing may be the ones with the loudest voices, but it’s the collective effort of a million little voices that really makes the Net unique, and a powerful force in today’s global culture. I’m not sure, for instance, whether there isn’t a more important site in the world at this very moment than Riverbend’s blog Baghdad Burning, not merely for its insider look at the American invasion of Iraq but for the fact that it exists at all -- her work is truly revolutionary in every sense of the word.
And I say this as a Webby judge and member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, the group that awards the Webbys. What, you thought I was just some dork with a Web site? No, this is what IADAS membership means:
All members of The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences vote on Webby Awards winners. Members of The Academy are visionaries, evangelists and luminaries who have catalyzed great achievements on the Internet or have demonstrated extraordinary talent in a traditional medium. The Internet experts faithfully represent the past and future of new media; they carry the voice of the Industry. The traditional masters possess an understanding of their fields that transcend the new medium. Their minds speak powerfully towards excellence and value within their field-advertising, art, film, science, or sports, for example -- online and off.
Of course, my voice is but one among many, no matter how much excellence and value my mind speaks. But Frank Barnako at MarketWatch agrees with me:
Shockingly, despite millions of bloggers and podcasters generating original content on the Web, relatively few individual efforts will be recognized at the 10th annual Webby Awards dinner next month in New York.Winners... have a definite corporate-patina: ESPN, HBO, Expedia, Burst! Media, and so on. In the 12 months since the last Webbys, notable for the rising voice of the little guy, the Webby Awards will pay almost no notice. The June 12th dinner will be sparkling, unfortunately with, as the news release puts it, "industry leaders (and) celebrities." Same old, same old.
Others are a tad unhappy with the Webbys, too. Some see a problem with the fact that an application fee is required by the self-nomination process; others lament the American-centric -- or at least English-language-centric -- tenor of the awards.
One notable trivia tidbit of this year’s Webbys: The Onion, which won in the Humor category, was also a nominee in the News category, along with with BBC, the Guardian, NPR, and Kevin Sites’ blog Hot Zone. It’s fascinating, but hardly surprising, that no mainstream corporate U.S. news source was even nominated for this supposedly U.S.-dominated award, but it’s downright extraordinary that a satire on news should be considered one of the best real-news sites around.
Strange times, indeed.
