Reforming The Webby Awards

ZagatBuzz from Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


I’m not griping about Tuesday night’s Webby Awards simply because MotherJones.com, winner of 2005 and 2006 Webbys for Best Political Blog, wasn’t even nominated this year. I’m griping because I don’t think that the awards show is headed in the right direction.

First, it’s not televised. The result is that awards nominees don’t get the same attention that Broadway performers (at the Tonys) or even sound technicians (at the Oscars) do. Why can’t web awards be a full-fledged red carpet event? With Tim Gunn tactfully commenting on Arianna Huffington’s poor taste in dress, or kooky Joan Rivers telling Kevin Drum that his wife looks great, even though he has actually brought his cat Domino as his date?

In its infancy, it was nice that Webby Award winners were limited to five word speeches. But now that so many winners are among the world’s best and brightest, I think we’d all like to hear what they have to say in more than 1/3 of a haiku.

As for the award categories themselves, they need to be reformed. Individual bloggers, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and other talented people don’t get the recognition they deserve by way of the Webby’s current list of 70 generalized categories.

And while Mother Jones has clearly reaped the benefits of winning these awards, the fact that they are “pay to play” makes it such that some web sites never get the recognition they deserve.

Maybe it’s up to someone else to start a new system of web-based awards. How would one go about doing this? Easy: First give the awards more visibility and hype than the Webbys, then give the winners a higher karat statuette.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate