The Bee’s John Muir Trail Blog Wins an ‘Edgie’
By The Fresno Bee, Calif.
Jan. 30–The Fresno Bee’s John Muir Trail blog, a multimedia project using audio, video and live blogging to complement a newspaper series on the historic Sierra Nevada trail, officially has the “edge.”
That’s according to the Newspaper Association of America’s New Media Federation, which on Monday named the blog a winner of its 12th annual Digital Edge Awards, also known as the “Edgies,” during its annual marketing conference in Las Vegas.
The Fresno Bee’s blog won an “Edgie” for most innovative multimedia storytelling for newspapers with circulations in the 75,000 to 250,000 range.
The awards recognized outstanding achievements by newspapers in online news coverage and Web site design, innovative visitor participation online efforts and other categories, choosing winners from almost 200 entries from across the country.
The John Muir Trail blog includes video, photographs and daily Weblog, or “blog,” entries from reporters and photographers who hiked the historic trail last summer, as well as maps and other material.
“The whole project was a huge adventure, on all these different levels,” said Betsy Lumbye, The Bee’s executive editor. She credited not only the reporters and photographers who contributed to the blog, but also those who worked behind the scenes to bring the blog to The Bee’s online audience.
“To me, it’s just the beginning, just a taste of the kind of things we can do now that the Internet is such a big part of our operation,” Lumbye said.
Jennifer Ward, The Fresno Bee’s online managing editor, said the award represented “recognition from other online professionals [of] the innovations that are happening at The Bee.”
The blog is not the first effort involving The Bee to win a Digital Edge Award. In 2001, “A Madness Called Meth,” a collaboration of The Fresno Bee, The Modesto Bee and The Sacramento Bee that complemented a newspaper series on the Central Valley’s methamphetamine problem, which ran in 2000, won the public service award for the 250,000-or-more circulation category.
The John Muir Trail blog can be viewed at www.fresnobeehive.com/jmt.
The reporter can be reached at jeffstjohn@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6637.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Fresno Bee, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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