BBC, Vice and Al Jazeera win big at Online Media Awards

The BBC scooped up five awards at The Drum's Online Media Awards in London last night, where a number of news organisations competed across categories such as outstanding digital team of the year, best use of citizen journalism and breaking news story of the year.

Al Jazeera and Vice received three awards each, including the Grand Prix of the evening for Vice, awarded for its 'Islamic State' documentary. Vice UK editor Alex Miller also won 'online editor of the year'.

Yonni Usiskin, supervising producer for Vice News Europe, said the awards are a "real validation of what we set out to achieve when launching Vice News last year" and that the organisation has built a "brilliant team of young reporters, film makers and writers".

"I think what we’ve seen over the last few years is this shift whereby people don’t expect to be watching crappy content online, so our standards for online video really are as high as the TV shows we’re making with HBO in the US and the feature films Vice has started making."

BBC News Online took home the prize for 'best national/world news site', 'best video journalism' and 'best Twitter feed' for BBC Breaking News.

The BBC's NHS Winter project, asking people to help tell the story over the pressures the NHS faces in winter, won 'best use of crowdsourcing or citizen journalism'. All four nominated projects for this award came from the BBC.

A new category introduced this year was 'best media podcast', won by the BBC's The Ouch Talk Show, a weekly audio series featuring informal and often humorous interviews and discussion around the topic of disability.

Ouch has been running for more than a decade and it is available exclusively online. According to Giles Wilson, a BBC features director overseeing the initiative, this has been something the team behind Ouch has turned to their advantage.

"There’s something particularly exciting about having won a 'best podcast' award at the moment when people are talking about them more and seeking differently-produced material online," said Damon Rose, Ouch's creator and one of the presenters.

He added that the podcast is a great medium for having a "real, immersive chat".

"For the team, it’s important validation that we are doing something interesting and worthwhile. As we’re a disabled production team, we approach disability in a less reverential and sometimes quite humorous way because we have confidence to do so."

Ouch beat Dennis Publishing's "PC Pro Podcast", the only other nominated project, to the award.

Al Jazeera English won the 'outstanding digital team of the year' category, with their Palestine Remix entry and 'best use of photography' for a project called Portrait of a yogi.

Launched in 2014, the interactive Palestine Remix  project is an online collection of video documentaries, as well as maps, timelines and quizzes about the occupied Palestinian territories.

"We are very happy to be recognised by our peers, because we made something different", said Rawan Damen, Al Jazeera commissioning senior producer who worked on the project. "Many people thought we were crazy to do this project, making our TV content into an online product that is very different from what it used to look like in the beginning."

Palestine Remix also uses a tool called Hyperaudio, which makes interactive transcripts combining text and video.

"We had these great stories on Palestine and they were shown on TV, but that's it. We thought it was the perfect way for our consumers and people who follow the Al Jazeera website to get to know more about those stories and be able to produce their own films and understanding of a very sensitive topic", she added.

The full list of winners across almost 30 categories is available on the Online Media Awards website. Nominees were required to pay a £75 entry fee.

Update: This article has been updated with comment from Vice News.

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