Berlin Project's journalism collaborative scoops new online journalism award

The Berlin Project, the multimedia initiative to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, has scooped a prize at a new awards for innovative online reporting.

The project, which was the work of an independent collaborative of young, multimedia-smart journalists, will receive an honorable mention prize as part of the International Journalism Festival's new Digital Heretics Awards, set up to recognise innovative use of the online medium for journalism. The other award winners will be announced at the festival on 22 April.

The team of freelancers, Alex Wood, Sheena Rossiter, Dominique van Heerden, Marcus Gilroy-Ware and Marco Woldt, attracted the attention of Reuters who signed up as partners for the coverage, which included video packages, audio, text and images to try to tell untold stories about the impact of the wall on Berliners.

The group has since established itself as journalism cooperative not on the wires and organised the Digital Storytelling conference last month.

"From the Berlin Project I learned how demanding a live project can be. Even though this project proved that reporting on an international event can be done with a home kit, not just anyone can do it. We had to be up for the challenge and dedicate ourselves to getting the coverage during the week that we were in Berlin. There were some teething problems, but as a whole we all think that the project was a success and a great experience," Sheena Rossiter told Journalism.co.uk.

"The project taught us that the only people stopping us from accomplishing and reporting on what we want to is, well, ourselves. Now that world class events can be reported on using a home kit, anyone has access to the equipment needed to create coverage of an event. That's why we've started to develop not on the wires. We know we can keep doing this."

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