Al Jazeera wins best website of the year at OMA

Al Jazeera Media Network has won a spate of top honours at the Drum Online Media Awards, including best website of the year and for breaking news coverage of the failed coup d’etat in Turkey.

The network’s digital division was honoured in London on Thursday night and captured six top prizes in total, which also included: the chairman’s award; best Twitter feed; best photographer for Showkat Shafi from Kashmir; and best brand development for Syhacked, the gamification of investigative journalism.

The website also won several honourable mentions. Al Jazeera’s social video team was identified for its work, producer Patrick Strickland’s Overlooked America series was highlighted, and India’s Menstruation Man also received recognition.

Broken Homes, a project that looked at the Israeli policy of demolishing Palestinians’ homes in occupied East Jerusalem, received a commendation for technical innovation.

https://twitter.com/OM_Awards/status/870422374897913861

Other organisations nominated for awards included CNN, Britain’s Channel 4 and The Independent.

“It’s an honour for all of us at Al Jazeera to be considered the best website of the year by our peers in the digital media industry,” said aljazeera.com’s Online Manager Imad Musa. 

“Our aim is to provide the best information we can across all platforms, every day, so that we can all understand our world a bit better.

“We have the best journalists in the world, and we have heart, and that’s what’s important.”

In its seventh year, the Drum Online Media Awards “identify the cleverest, boldest and most original purveyors of news and views from around the world”, according to its website.

“The industry has its obvious big hitters in CNN, the BBC and The Huffington Post, to name a few. With great resource and imagination, you would consider them unbeatable, yet it can be some of the smaller news sites that can break the biggest news,” it said.

In 2016, Al Jazeera English Online won four awards that included best website of the year and best use of photography, while Yasir Khan was named online editor of the year, and Alaa Batayneh won the award for most effective media toolkit.

It also won two commendations, one for outstanding digital team of the year, and one for best commentary/blogging for Barry Malone’s Why Al Jazeera will not say Mediterranean ‘migrants’ piece.