Media

Since 2001, the Grimme Online Award has bestowed its coveted prizes on special websites and Internet projects. Among the winners have been news and science portals from well-known media organizations such as “N-TV.de”, “Spiegel Online” and “Dradio Wissen”.

“The Internet is developing much more rapidly and vivaciously than other media, including print, radio and TV. There are simply more options and more people are involved,” says communications specialist Christoph Neuberger in an overall assessment of the medium, and as a member of the jury for the Grimme Online Awards, he would know. The award for special websites and online projects was given for the first time 10 years ago, in 2001 and Neuberger laughs at the question of what was still considered unthinkable before the Internet and online media arrived. He recalls a reference book that was published in the mid-90s: “At the time, 100 experts were surveyed about new developments in media. The word “Internet” didn’t come up once in their assessments. Only one person thought that maybe one day there would be something like a digital newspaper that you could read on your computer screen.”

The wisdom of crowds or the power of the user

The first collaborative user projects like Wikipedia appeared at the beginning of the 2000s. Despite being laughed at in the beginning, some of these sites have developed into serious resources of information and archived data. Whether their reliability could ever eclipse that of more traditional, printed works like the Encyclopedia Britannica, however, has long been a point of contention. This makes Wikipedia’s distinction by the Grimme Online Awards in 2005 all the more important – it is further proof of the increasing reliability of the information and the professional maintenance of these types of resources.

The fact that the work of laypeople can even live up to rigorous scientific standards was shown in the GuttenPlag Wiki project. More than 1,000 volunteers compared texts from various publications and compiled an archive of the sources used by Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg in his doctoral thesis (which led to an embarrassing plagiarism scandal). Traditional media such as newspapers and magazines even used the source archive. As a result of its unique social relevance, GuttenPlag Wiki was given the Grimme Online Award in 2011. The jury saw the site as an important pioneer with a forum format that forces politicians to prove their credibility online. GuttenPlag Wiki, according to jury member Neuberger, is a good example of the wisdom of crowds: many users together possess the relevance and potency to affect public change.

Web rally in Prison Valley or a new documentary format

The Grimme Online Award not only acknowledges websites that distinguish themselves with unique contextual concepts, but also ones that represent media-specific breakthroughs – user-friendly sites that implement cross-media elements, for example – such as the online documentary Prison Valley from Arte. Photographer Philippe Brault and journalist David Dufresne endeavored to find out what life was like in Canyon City, Colorado, a small town with 13 prisons built by the state. The web tour researches the highly complex prison industry in the area and combines it with striking imagery and narratives from inhabitants, hotel owners and business people regarding life in Prison Valley. The partially interactive concept is what convinced the Grimme Online Awards jury: Users can visit the city on their own and decide for themselves which people or areas they wish to learn more about.

Sound pools or acoustic illustrations

Creativity was the main reason wortwuselwelt, an immensely inspiring platform for children (and adults), won its Grimme prize. Based on the drag-and-drop principle, users can create their own collages, to give a butterfly wings, for example. Older children can put letters together to create images, write haiku or even draft poems with interesting acoustic illustrations. A pool with different sounds, environments and noises provide the raw materials here. At wortwuselwelt, the cliché about the Internet being a medium with limited creative capacity is quickly dismissed.

Due to the increasingly detailed display options, for example with interactive maps, the Internet is also fast becoming a better medium for detective work of a unique sort. Die Zeit Online developed the project Verräterisches Handy (lit. traitorous mobile phone), a documentary on the potential of data retention in telecommunications. Politician and Internet activist Malte Spitz sued his telephone provider into releasing all of his archived data. He then gave the data to journalists at Die Zeit Online, where users can now monitor the politician’s movements, and see the times and number of calls he has made. The profile was enhanced with information from Sptiz’ Twitter account, including business appointments. The result was an enlightening piece on the breadth of activity and the communications habits one can glean from the information that telephone companies collect, and how much of that information we leave online voluntarily. Investigative journalism at its finest, presented for all to see.