The Lincolnite wins Chairman's Award at Online Media Awards

The Lincolnite, an independent news and events site for the Lincoln area, has won the Chairman's Award at this year's Online Media Awards.

The award, which was previously won by the Mail Online, Nursing Times and Press Gazette, was chosen by Noel Young, chairman of the judges and US editor of the Drum. Young commended the Lincolnite for delivering local news and using its Twitter feed as a news ticker.

"That really condenses the appeal of this local website," he said. "I thought it was very neat."

The digital-native nature of the Lincolnite has led to repeated innovations in terms of the content and service it provides, including an interactive map produced for May's county council elections and an iBook series centred around the local community.

"This is definitely a nod that we are going in the right direction and we're very happy about it," Daniel Ionescu, managing editor at the Lincolnite, told Journalism.co.uk, explaining how he felt the reward was recognition for the site's focus on photography, large images, social media and community.  "The whole site concept was designed by us from scratch and built by a team of local developers so these are ideas we'll be carrying forward from now."

Elsewhere, Channel 4 News/ITN received six awards including website of the year; the Huffington Post's Carla Buzasi was named online editor of the year for the second year in a row; and Al-Jazeera English won the best technical innovation for its Syrian Defector Tracker, alongside Channel 4's Scrapbook.

• Website of the year - Channel 4 News/ITN
• Chairman's award - Stonebow Media for thelincolnite.co.uk
• Online editor of the year - Carla Buzasi, editor-in-chief, Huffington Post
• Digital writer of the year - Dave Gilbert, technology editor, International Business Times UK
• Outstanding digital team of the year - Channel 4 News web team
• Best freelance writer - Teo Kermeliotis from CNN
• Best site for news-led journalism - Channel 4 News/ITN for channel4news.com/news
• Best specialist site for journalism - Emap for Nursing Times
• Best local/regional news site - Independent News & Media (NI) for belfasttelegraph.co.uk
• Best national/world news site - The New York Times for global.nytimes.com and Financial Times for FT.com
• Best campaigning/investigative journalism - Times Newspapers Ltd for the Times Tax Avoidance Investigation
• Best commentary/blogging - Times Newspapers Ltd for the Times School Gate Blog
• Best video journalism - BBC News website for BBC News on Demand
• Best designed site - Reuters for reuters.com/widerimage and ITV News for itv.com/news
• Best twitter feed - Channel 4 News/ITNfor Jon Snow Channel 4 News @jonsnowC4
• Best use of social media - Channel 4 News/ITN
• Best use of crowd sourcing or citizen journalism - The New York Times for Watching Syria's War
• Best brand development - Metro for Metro Digital Editions
• Best commercial innovation - Toronto Star for Star Dispatches and Reed Business Information for Community Care
• Best use of photography - Reuters for The Wider Image
• Best technical innovation - Al-Jazeera English for Online Syrian Defector Tracker and Channel Four Television Corporation for Scrapbook
• Best app - The Economist for The Economist on iPad, iPhone and Android and Sky News for Sky News for iPad
• Best lifestyle/leisure news site - Hearst Magazines UK for goodhousekeeping.co.uk and MSN UK for MSN UK
• Best business/finance news site - Agrimoney.com
• Best health/educationnews site - BACP for therapytoday.net

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