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ElectricNews named in media award finals
Friday, June 21 2002
by Andrew McLindon


ElectricNews.Net has been shortlisted for the third year in a row for a Net Media
European Online Journalism award.



The Irish on-line IT and telecoms news service has been nominated in the
Technology category of the 2002 awards for its series of articles aimed at
demystifying wireless technologies. The site is the only Irish on-line media
outlet shortlisted for an award.



Last year ElectricNews.Net took the top prize in the Multimedia category for its
work in delivering news and alerts across multiple platforms including Web,
e-mail, WAP and audio.



In the Technology category ElectricNews.Net will be going up against BBC News
Online's science and technology team for its articles "Welcome to the era of
drive-by hacking" and "Village in the Clouds embraces computers."



The awards, which are now in their fourth year, have 17 categories covering areas
such as best news story, best news design and navigation and best overall
journalism service. Companies nominated for awards include Guardian Unlimited,
the Scotsman, Spain Espiral and Newscientist.com. The awards ceremony takes place
in London on 4 July.



The on-line media sector did not escape the dot.com bomb phenomenon that it
widely reported on, and many news sites and services have either gone out of
business or scaled back their services over the last 18 months.



Milverton Wallace, founder and organiser of the European Online Journalism
Awards, said that the last year had been "very tough" for the on-line media
sector. "Despite sites like The New York Times doing well there is a lot of
depression around. There is no real investment in the sector and the digital
media area has been painted with the same brush as the main technology market,"
commented Wallace.



Several sites such as The Irish Times' ireland.com and FT.com have reacted to the
changes in the sector by charging for access to certain elements of their content
as revenues from on-line advertising dried up.



Wallace said that such a strategy was risky unless the service offered was in a
specialised field. "A recent study showed that conversion rates of customers
when sites changed from free to fee-based was just 2.3 percent. It is unlikely
that general content sites will survive charging for content, but sites that
concentrate on certain areas will have a better chance," he remarked.



However, despite all the upheavals, the 2002 European Online Journalism Awards
did manage to more than double its number of entries from last year to over 780.