Washington Post Cleans Up at E&P's EPpy Awards

The Washington Post took the Best Overall Newspaper-Affiliated Internet Service and four other top awards per E&P:

In the category of Best Overall Newspaper-Affiliated Internet Service with more than 1 million unique monthly visitors, Washingtonpost.com took top honors.........An article at The Washington Post hailed the company winning five of the awards: washingtonpost.com (which took home three), Slate Magazine, and newsweek.com.....

I don't think there is any doubt that WaPo as a company is the leader when it comes to an MSM organization understanding how to offer online products, and the EPpy awards would further enforce that point. I'm not necessarily talking about the political leanings of paper, but the delivery of online news by an old guard in the MSM, the online product. Jim Brady the VP & Executive Editor of washingtonpost.com had this to say about the awards:

"This is a validation of what we were trying to do for the past few years, trying to bring down the walls between the journalists and the readers," said Jim Brady, the vice president and executive editor of washingtonpost.com, who was also a panelist at the conference. "We're trying to take the world-class journalism of The Washington Post and merge it with these new media. Almost anything is possible, and we certainly see this as an indication that we're headed in the right direction."

WaPo certain had some conflict this past year with their online product, with the lefty attacks earlier in the year over "Deleted Comments" after a blog swarm over a story they had done on Jack Abramoff that was described as following by WaPo:

The move came after several comments containing personal attacks, profanity and hate speech were posted on an item about Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell's recent column about the Abramoff scandal: Getting the Story on Jack Abramoff , ( Post, Jan. 15 ). At the time, washingtonpost.com Executive Editor Jim Brady wrote, "We're not giving up on the concept of having a healthy public dialogue with our readers, but this experience shows that we need to think more carefully about how we do it." Brady discussed the decision in a live discussion last week...........................

There was also the hiring of right of center blogger Ben Domenech (hint: need much more of that to move to the next level) and his immediate resignation over charges of "plagiarism"

In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday. An investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the interim, Domenech has resigned, effective immediately.

In both cases they navigated the storm and moved on. The New Media is much different than the old MSM and those that think posting their legacy product in an online format alone get them there, won't ever get there. The winners of these awards are in a much healthier position than all of their competitors in terms of their livelihood and product in the coming years..........So, take a bow........

As a side note to E&P: don't you think that you should probably provide "links" to the websites of these products that won your award and you are highlighting via an online article from your online product? Just a thought.......

----------------Update--------------------------

E&P has updated their post above to now include links to the winning online papers..........Obviously a favorable edit........................