The Overseas Press Club of America, whose annual OPC Awards have represented the pinnacle of foreign news coverage by American reporters since 1939, has decided to expand the 2005 award contest to include online entrants.
The new Online category, approved by the OPC's Board of Governors earlier this month, will honor the "best original international coverage that goes beyond other mediums to bring the story to readers, to enable interactivity or direct involvement and to take advantage creatively of the multimedia capabilities of the web."
OPC President Richard Stolley, who is senior editorial advisor at Time Inc., described the move as "an important recognition that the Internet is not just a means for relaying information, but a medium unto itself with unique storytelling and news gathering capabilities."
The Overseas Press Club has been singling out the best of American foreign news coverage since the year it was founded, when Edward R.Murrow, the New York Times and Leland Stowe of the Chicago Daily News were honored for coverage of the buildup to war in Europe. Last year's awards, the 65th annual event, featured multiple awards for New York Times and Washington Post coverage of combat in Iraq and a lifetime achievement award for OPC member Ted Koppel of ABC News. A full list of 2004 winners and an archive of past honorees is online.
The new Online category, which had been under consideration for several years, is specifically tailored to ensure that winners represent web-exclusive coverage of a story or series of stories. "The idea is to make sure we're not just seeing newspaper or network broadcast coverage that's been ported over from the old media mother ship to the Internet," says OPC board secretary Michael Moran, the executive editor of Council on Foreign Relations website, cfr.org. Moran, who spent nine years in senior editorial positions at msnbc.com, will chair the judging committee for the Online category in its inaugural year.
The 2005 awards application (PDF) includes detailed instructions on how entries should be submitted, as well as a full listing of the other OPC Award categories.
