Al Jazeera’s The Stream wins Webby award

Al Jazeera English’s social media programme The Stream has won the People’s Voice Award for “News and Politics: Series” in the online film and video category at this year’s Webbys.

The Stream beat four other entries to its award with over 40 per cent of the vote and will be honoured at a ceremony in New York on May 21.

The 2012 Webby People’s Voice Awards saw nearly 1.5 million votes cast by people around the world for their favourite sites, videos, mobile apps and more.

James Wright, Executive Producer of Programming and The Stream, welcomed the award.

“We are proud of everything The Stream has achieved in just one year on air, and are especially happy to win the Webby People’s Voice Award this year, as our online community is one of the most important parts of The Stream, and vital to the show’s success,” Wright said.
 
“With the help of our viewers on air and online, The Stream will continue to strive to push the boundaries in our daily coverage of important issues.”

Earlier this year, The Stream won a Royal Television Society Award for “Innovative News” for its in-depth analysis of the struggle between government loyalists and opposition supporters in Bahrain.

This is the first time the Al Jazeera Network has won a Webby People’s Voice Award, after being nominated for its Arabic website in 2004.

The Webby Awards had nearly 10,000 entries this year, making them the leading international awards honouring websites and web programming.

Other awards went to Pinterest, Google+ and Spotify, all of whom picked up their first Webbys. FactCheck.org won the best political website award, while the US spoof news site The Onion picked up five awards including Best Comedy website.

The Icelandic singer Bjork was among this year’s special achievement winners for her Biophilia album, which has been dubbed the world’s first app album.

The Webby awards were set up in 1996 and are voted on by a body of web experts.

Seen by many as online equivalent of the Oscars, 2012 judges included Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and mobile phone inventor Martin Cooper.