Annmarie248’s Weblog

The Las Vegas Sun may have had a home court advantage on Thursday when they picked up a 2008 EPpy award in Las Vegas at the Rio Conference Center.  But the familiar playing field really just amounted to them being able to have more representatives available to attend the awards ceremony. 

 The Sun was up for 2 EPpy awards, the first for the best overall design of a web site with fewer than 1 million unique monthly visitors, despite the overwhelming hoots and hollers from the Sun staff, that award went to Metromix.com.  But The Sun was soon to be vindicated, they took home the EPpy for best overall newspaper-affiliated web site with fewer than 1 million unique monthly visitors.  The reaction of Sun staffers was by far the most exuberant of all the awards recipients.  This was the first EPpy award for The Sun and they were also the only Las Vegas area nominee to take home one of the prestigious EPpys.

     The 13^th annual EPpy awards were held in Las Vegas this week at the Rio Conference Center.  The EPpy’s honor the best media-company web sites.  The awards ceremony luncheon was sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and presented at the Editor and Publisher/Mediaweek Interactive Media Conference.  The EPpy’s pay homage to media and journalism web sites that are innovating, interactive and going above and beyond other web sites in their respective fields.  The EPpy’s winners are picked by 50 judges who are all well respected within their own fields.  The awards are especially prestigious because the winners are chosen by the entrants peers.  With over 30 different categories to compete in, there was a broad spectrum of journalistic professionals on hand at the Rio.  One of the top winners at the ceremony was The New York Times, they snagged 3 of the prestigious EPpy’s.  Below is a full list of the finalists and the winners at the 2008 EPpy’s.

Best Business Web Site, with more than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: BusinessWeek.com
BNET
The Wall Street Journal Online

Best Classified Web Site, with fewer than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: NWjobs.com
The Boston Globe
NWautos.com
HeraldNet.com

Best Classified Web Site, with more than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: Cars.com
Newsday.com
NYTimes.com/RealEstate
Post-gazette.com

Best College Newspaper Web Site
Winner: The Daily Reveille, at www.lsureveille.com
ASU Web Devil
Idsnews.com

Best Community Web Site, with fewer than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: The Denver Post
The Enquirer & Cincinnati.Com
The Press-Enterprise/PE.com
The Enquirer & NKY.com

Best Community Web Site, with more than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: msnbc.com
Beliefnet Community
TV Guide Online

Best Entertainment Blog
Winner: Pop Candy, USATODAY.com
Copious Notes, a blog of Kentucky.com and LexGo.com
HandStamp, chron.com/Houston Chronicle
Kristin2Go, chron.com/Houston Chronicle
Stuck in the ’80s, tampabay.com

Best Entertainment Web Site, with fewer than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: Indy.com, Indianapolis Star Media Group
LexGo.com
Metromix.com
OnMilwaukee.com, Milwaukee’s daily magazine
Vita.mn

Best Entertainment Web Site, with more than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: PEOPLE.com
Azcentral.com and The Arizona Republic
EW.com

Best Local Radio-Affiliated Web Site
Winner: iCat fm, icatfm.cat, Catalunya Radio
SignOnRadio.com
MyNorthwest.Com
Mpr.org

Best National Magazine-Affiliated Web Site
Winner: Thisoldhouse.com
Kiplinger.com
Newsweek.com
The New Yorker — NewYorker.com
SI.com

Best Network or Syndicated Radio-Affiliated Web Site
Winner: American RadioWorks from American Public Media
CBCNews.ca, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Best News Web Site, with fewer than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: LJWorld.com
3cat24.cat
HeraldTribune.com
Las Vegas Sun
Naplesnews.com

Best News Web Site, with more than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: NYTimes.com
BBC News website
CBCNews.ca, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
msnbc.com
Slate Magazine

Best News/Politics Blog
Winner: The Swamp, www.chicagotribune.com
Adam Radwanski, globeandmail.com
CNN Political Ticker, cnnpolitics.com
PoliticsWest.com, www.politicswest.com
Stumper, Newsweek.com

Best Overall Design of a Web Site, with fewer than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: Metromix.com
The Enquirer & Cincinnati.Com
KnoxNews.com
Las Vegas Sun
Observer.com

Best Overall Design of a Web Site, with more than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: Detnews.com, The Detroit News
PlayhouseDisney.com
Thisoldhouse.com
Washingtonpost.com

Best Overall Local TV/Cable-Affiliated Web Site
Winner: KING5.com
Fox News Chicago
Wibw.com
WRAL.com

Best Overall Network TV/Cable-Affiliated Web Site
Winner: CBSNews.com
CNN.com
Discovery.com
ESPN.com

Best Overall Newspaper-Affiliated Web Site, with fewer than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: Las Vegas Sun
APP.com, Asbury Park Press
GazetteXtra.com
Knoxnews.com
NWHerald.com

Best Overall Newspaper-Affiliated Web Site, with more than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: NYTimes.com
Newsday.com
The Wall Street Journal Online
USA TODAY
Washingtonpost.com

Best Regional Magazine-Affiliated Web Site
Winner: VisionMonday.com
7×7SF.com
ExploreSteamboat.com, Steamboat Pilot & Today

Best Spanish-Language Newspaper-Affiliated Web Site
Winner: ELPAÍS.com
Aldiatx.com, El Portal de Noticias del Norte de Texas
Elcomercio.com.pe, El Comercio Perú

Best Special Feature in a Web Site — Enterprise, with fewer than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: Diabetes: The Invisible Epidemic, PalmBeachPost.com
Coincidence or Cluster: The McCullom Lake Brain Cancer Lawsuits, The Northwest Herald
HeraldTribune.com Broken Trust, HeraldTribune.com
Indy 911 Calls, Indianapolis Star Media Group
Teachers and Sex, www.eastvalleytribune.com

Best Special Feature in a Web Site — Enterprise, with more than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: Katrina Recovery Coverage, The Associated Press
“Exonerated, Freed, and What Happened Then,” NYTimes.com
Discovery Earth Live, Discovery.com
E-Ticket: Ray of Hope, ESPN.com
Voices of the Fallen, Newsweek.com

Best Special Feature in a Web Site — News or Event, with fewer than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: Oklahoma Centennial, NewsOK.com
Arizona Daily Star’s iWait
CaptureCincinnati.com, The Enquirer & Cincinnati.Com

Best Special Feature in a Web Site — News or Event, with more than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: 13 Seconds in August, StarTribune.com
Prison Suicide Crisis, Boston.com
Virginia Tech Shootings Coverage, The Associated Press

Best Sports Blog
Winner: The FanHouse, AOL Sports
Brewers Blog, JSOnline.com
ChicagoSports, The Rosenblog
The Memphis Edge, Commercialappeal.com

Best Sports Web Site, with fewer than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: GoVolsXtra
Arkansassports360.com
CommunitySportsDesk,kenoshanews.com
Varsity845.com, Hudson Valley Media Group

Best Sports Web Site, with more than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: USATODAY.com
BOSTON.COM: SPORTS
CBSSports.com
ESPN.com
Detnews.com

Best Use of Video in a Web Site, with fewer than one million unique monthly visitors
Winner: CBC Digital Archives Web site - Les archives de Radio-Canada
Cape Cod Online/Cape Cod Times
Northwest Herald
Studio 55 – naplesnews.com
TV3minuts

     Art is all around us everyday.  And when there isn’t art, sometime people take the initiative to step up and create it for us.  That’s what physical graffiti is all about, taking something that you’d never think of as art and making it artistic.  There are videos popping up all over YouTube of people expressing themselves in creative new ways through things that you’d never think of as a means of expressing oneself.  For instance, how many times have you really taken your walk to that higher ground and made it a true expression of yourself or what you’re feeling at the moment, probably never.  Or have you taken the time to film yourself running and jumping off of random objects in public places for the enjoyment of others?  There’s a new form of artist on the rise and they’re using their bodies as the paint and the world is their canvas.  Here’s some of my favorite videos that are up right now.  The Chase, le Parkour Aotearoa, and Parkour Generations NYC

     Tricia Walsh-Smith isn’t your ordinary jilted housewife.  She’s the wife of Philip Smith, millionaire president of the Shubert Organization in New York.  She’s also a big ball of crazy wrapped in outrage and hurt.  Since her husband has started with divorce proceedings and the process of removing her from their home she’s taken to YouTube to try to get the public behind her.  She claims that she’s acquired $100,000 in lawyers fees so far and is taking the role of martyr to a whole new level.  Her first YouTube video came out 2 weeks ago, in it she talks about her lack of a sex life with her husband, his Viagra use, and even calls his assistant asking where to put his condoms and porn tapes.  This new video seems to be a bit more toned down although it’s still the polar opposite of what a rational person would be doing while going through such a situation.  Walsh-Smith talks about her father dying while she was young leading her to have “daddy issues”, asks everyone to pitch in so she can buy a tent to live in once her hubby gives her the boot from their New York home and then goes on to scold everyone who’s sent her nasty messages since her first video posted.  Love is a beautiful thing.

     The weak economy combined with low wages and high prices for food and fuel are hitting everyone where it hurts, YouTubers are uploading their stories to help themselves and others out of poverty and cyclical government programs.  $1.09 a day is what the government figures every person who is in need of food stamps and other forms of government assistance needs to be able to eat 3 healthy well rounded meals a day.  You may be capable of surviving on that much money per day, but you’ll never be able to get ahead. 

     In the PBS documentary “Waging a Living pts.1-8”, people who are making low hourly wages let their struggles be taped and explain how they got to the point in their lives where they were just barely scrapping by.  The documentary was directed and produced by Roger Weisburg who has been making films designed to enlighten the public to the plight faced by those who are forced to turn to government assistance.  “The words ‘working poor’ ought to be an oxymoron. The idea that you can work full time and still be poor in this society is a real crime,” according to Weisburg.  The number of working poor in this country is on the rise and the way that government programs are set up to handle the situation just isn’t effective.  People like Weisburg are working hard to keep poverty in the public eye and not just behind closed doors.  Here’s links to the series “Waging a Living pts. 2-8”  2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

     It’s a techies worst nightmare, the equivalent to an online apocalypse.  The Internet may be too big for it’s own britches within 2 years according to AT&T.  That’s right, the Internet may run out of bandwidth and video sharing sites are taking the brunt of the blame.  Vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, Jim Cicconi spoke to industry representatives at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 last week.  In essence, high-definition videos are trying to force too much information through too small a space and there will be no space left by the year 2010 according to AT&T unless upgrades are made to the infrastructure of the internet.  Cnetnews.com reported that Cicconi added, “Eight hours of video is loaded onto YouTube every minute. Everything will become HD very soon, and HD is 7 to 10 times more bandwidth-hungry than typical video today. Video will be 80 percent of all traffic by 2010, up from 30 percent today.”   The estimates for the cost of renovating the Internet range from $55 billion to upgrade the United States and $130 billion to tackle the problem worldwide. 

     The internet may be desensitizing kids to violence, but didn’t that whole trend start a long time ago with television?  It’s just that now with the internet kids have their own network to broadcast violence from as opposed to just watching at home and then silently taking it out on a peer sans film crew.  YouTube is filled with videos that contain fights or other violent acts, they have policies set up that remove videos if they’re deemed violent or contain nudity.   But the task of filtering through the thousands of videos that are uploaded daily is a daunting one and it does take the site a bit of time before they can remove a video that’s been flagged.  The most recent and publicized violent video on YouTube is of 16 year-old Victoria Lindsay being attacked by six of her female classmates while two boys were posted as lookouts.  Lindsay had been lured into the home where she was attacked and then beaten unconscious, placed on the couch till she awoke and then backed into a corner and beaten some more.  All of this while one of the girls was filming the atrocious acts so that it could be posted on YouTube as some sort of ill planned revenge for Lindsay’s supposed comments about her attackers on her Myspace page.  Since police released the video of Linsdays attack to the press there has been a media circus surrounding the whole event.  It’s been an utter melee of networks fighting for coverage of the girls first court appearances and parents being interviewed and of course running the video of the beating will probably never get old.    As if the story wasn’t strange enough, Dr. Phil McGraw, of the Dr. Phil show, had some of his staffers bail out one of the attackers, Mercades Nichols from jail.  The teens all had their bail set between $30,000 and $37,000.  The Dr. Phil show later decided that they would not go through with the show that Nichols was supposed to be a guest on due to the shows guidelines being compromised.

     There is a general sense of outrage directed towards the attackers online and in the media.  But some are blaming the Internet for all of this violence because it was manufactured online (Myspace comments) and intended for online use (the YouTube video).  One former bully, Rob Havilland, 32 stated that, “yeah, if we could have showed or beat-downs online then I’m sure that there’d be a lot more of em’ and I’d probably be in jail still.” 

     So what can parents to do ensure that their kids aren’t the victims of bullies or that they aren’t the ones doing the bullying?  According to the director of Safe and Drug Free Schools for the Cadillac, Michigan Area Public School District, Danette Crozier MSW, “the only way that parents can be sure is to snoop.  I had one mom come in who has an older student and she told me that she goes through his Myspace and AIM accounts at least once a week.  Privacy is earned.”  Crozier runs a program called Second Step, it’s an anti-bullying program that has had a great deal of success in her school district and she’s hoping that other schools will implement the same style programs to make sure that violence and harassment aren’t a normal part of any childs school day.   

      People are rushing out like lemmings to see who can do the craziest/deadliest stunt to capture the title of flavor of the week on YouTube.  The instant celebrity that goes along with people all over the world seeing you in just a few days or weeks is too tempting for some to resist.  Unfortunately teens with freshly minted drivers licenses are taking to the roads with camera phones in attempts to gain the overnight stardom that they’ve seen now quasi-celebrities like Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O from MTV’s hit show Jackass attain.  The latest such effort by a teen to get uploaded could very well end in tragedy.  Two teens were trying to get all four wheels of their car off the ground in Arizona on Wednesday so that they could put footage of it on YouTube.  The driver lost control after the car exceeded 80 mph, both the passenger and driver were injured, the driver is in still in critical condition.

     So where will YouTube go next?  What will be off limits to upload, will they be sued by distraught parents every time a teenager who’s all hopped up on hormones and the zeal of being young gets into an accident trying to get “famous”?  Will YouTube soon be edited for your safety?

     The Church of Scientology has gobs of celebrity followers from Tom Cruise to Kirstie Alley.  The Church was created by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in the 50’s and is highly speculative.  The group has been accused of being a cult in the past by many organizations including the Cult Awareness Network, which was subsequently bought by supporters of Scientology in 1996 and no longer considers the organization to be cult like.  How does all of this pertain to YouTube you may wonder.  Well, television star Jason Beghe who has been a strong supporter of Scientology for 14 years just showed up on YouTube denouncing the religion and saying, “Scientology is destructive and it’s a rip off…if Scientology is real then something’s f**ked up.”  Scientology is somewhat of a mystery for many people and to have one of it’s staunchest celebrity supporters speaking out against it publicly is a very new development and insight into the underbelly of the religion.  Although the YouTube segment of Beghe is just a teaser, with all of the buzz surrounding it, there’s sure to be more to come. 

     When your divorce isn’t going your way get on YouTube and air your dirty laundry for the world to see.  That may not seem conventional by any means, but that’s what Tricia Walsh Smith has done.  Walsh Smith is the wife of Philip Smith who is the president of the largest theater owner in New York, the Shubert Organization.  In her desperate YouTube rant she says that her husband has no grounds for divorce which would nullify their prenuptial agreement.  She says that in the agreement that she signed she would be entitled to a monthly pension after his death and one of their homes in Florida if the marriage failed and she was not found at fault.  She then proceeds to call his office and ask what she should do with her husbands condoms and Viagra, this is all after she has announced details about their sex life to the film crew in her soon to be former home on Park Avenue.  Will this become the newest trend in divorces, divorce lawyer, Bonnie Rabin told the associated press, “This is absolutely a new step, and I think it’s scary.”  Only time will tell if Walsh Smith is really onto something with the whole idea of publicly attacking her husband online or if the divorce just gets uglier than it already is.