Homicide Watch DC wins Online Journalism Award

Crime reporting site Homicide Watch DC, which recently crowdfunded more than $40,000 to secure its survival through the creation of a student reporting lab, was named as one of the winners of the Online Journalism Awards at the weekend.

According to the Online News Association conference liveblog and video of the proceedings, Homicide Watch DC was given the Knight Award for public service, one of a number of awards presented over the course of the evening.

Having exceeded its $40,000 target on Kickstarter, Homicide Watch is now accepting applications for student internships, which will help keep the site going while founder Laura Amico, who set up the site in September 2010, goes to study journalism innovation at Harvard with her husband Chris who also works on the site.

Accepting the OJA public service award, which offers a $5,000 prize, Laura Amico said: "We've worked on this project on our kitchen table for two years, and to everyone working on projects on their kitchen tables, this is for you."

Chris Amico added: "For everyone who's on your own, building a business out of their savings, who's doing this from the ground-up, this is for you."

Other OJA winners include ProPublica, which was named the winner of general excellence in online journalism in the 'medium site' category. The New York Times took the same award in the 'large site' category, one of two awards for the New York Times on the night, and PBS Frontline in the 'small site category.

Digital storytelling platform Storify received the Ganett Foundation award for technical innovation in the service of digital journalism.

Collecting the award, co-founder Burt Herman said they have has been "amazed by how people have started using what we do".

"We're really humbled by that and look forward to helping you tell many more stories."

ONA's video of the awards ceremony is embedded below and the ONA Student Newsroom has a full list of the 31 winners:

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