Al Jazeera Digital scoops up nine Shorty Awards

The Al Jazeera Media Network has won nine Shorty Awards – two gold, one silver, three bronze and three audience honours – in the 15th annual awards honouring excellence in online media.

Winners were announced May 24 in New York City.

Al Jazeera’s Digital Division won two top prizes in the news and media category for the AJ English Twitter team and the podcast news and politics category for the current affairs podcast The Take.

The news and current affairs programme Start Here also won a silver Shorty in the news and media category, and AJ+ Arabic, French, Spanish and English won a bronze news and media award for their combined coverage of the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces.

Al Jazeera’s investigations unit – the I-Unit – also won a bronze award in the podcast news and politics category for The Truth Illusion.

Other Arabic language strands and units at Al Jazeera Digital also won prizes with the Arabic Net cartoon series Mansy scooping up both a bronze award and an audience honour in the interaction and digital storytelling category.

Digital Newsroom (DNR), meantime, won two audience honours for its Arabic language Instagram and YouTube channels.

The Shorty Awards serve as an annual benchmark for evaluating the performance of websites and personal accounts with the most impact and engagement on social media.

Since 2008, media organizations and international production companies have competed for these awards over 148 categories. A ceremony will be held to honour the winners on November 23.