Matt, Julie, and I got some very good news this week: BirdersWorld.com received a 2009 silver Eddie Award for excellence in online editorial from Folio magazine.
The Eddie and Ozzie Awards, conducted annually, are the largest awards competition in magazine publishing. The Ozzies recognize excellence in magazine design. The Eddies recognize editorial excellence. We couldn't be happier.
See a list of all 2009 Eddie Award winners.
As I'm sure you know, we gave our site a long-overdue, top-to-bottom overhaul at the beginning of the year. The new site -- heck, now I can call it our award-winning site -- launched on March 18 after many weeks of analysis, brainstorming, and focused, creative effort by a team of very talented people: Web Project Lead Alex Gaudynski, Interactive Designer Jon Truelove, Senior Online Programmer Craig Kuhlow, Associate Editor Matt Mendenhall, Photo Editor Ernie Mastroianni, and Editorial Associates Julie Kuczynski and Jessica Eskelsen. If you get the chance, please join me in congratulating them.
Our Eddie Award is a testament to their hard work and creativity, and it suggests to me -- and I hope you agree -- that we took a big step toward accomplishing the goals we set for ourselves at the beginning of the year.
First and foremost, we wanted to create a site that served you well. That is, we wanted it to be easy for you to subscribe, renew, arrange gift subscriptions, manage your account, get answers to your questions, even send a letter to the editor. How'd we do? Since we're always looking for ways to improve, I'd always be happy to hear from you. (You can contact our customer service department here.)
We wanted to showcase our outstanding contributing editors: Julie Craves, Pete Dunne, Eldon Greij, Kenn Kaufman, Paul Kerlinger, and David Allen Sibley. (You can read more about them here.) I think they're the best in the business -- knowledgeable, easy to understand, often funny, always on the mark. Even if you've been a subscriber for only a short time, you can read online what they've been contributing to Birder's World for years.
We wanted to gather together all the reporting we've done over the years about great birdwatching destinations. This remains a work in progress, too, as we're adding stories, old and new, all the time. Most recently, we added feature articles about one place I can't wait to visit -- Florida's Dry Tortugas National Park -- and another I can't recommend highly enough: Veracruz, Mexico.
Also online is the web version of our popular print feature "Hotspots Near You." In it you can now find 80 concise profiles of easily accessible birding destinations in the U.S. and Canada. And just this week, we added the first installment of a brand-new collection of hotspot articles: our readers' 25 favorite places to watch eagles. Just imagine if the Folio judges had seen that!
We wanted to create online galleries for your photographs of birds: Birds in your backyard. Birds in the U.S. and Canada. Birds from around the world. Atypical birds. Rare birds. Now these galleries not only exist but, thanks to you, are full of excellent images. Consider these examples: A Painted Bunting that showed up in Nunavut. The recent Ancient Murrelet in St. Joseph, Michigan. The MacGillivray's Warbler that was in Boston. The Ivory Gull being seen now at Cape May. (You can view a keyword cloud of all the species represented in our galleries here.)
See the most recent Photo of the Week.
We also wanted to continue serving as an online coffee shop for birdwatchers from all over. Thanks to you (again), our forums are now filled with people asking and answering questions, sharing photos and information, making friends, making each other laugh, and learning about birds. Why don't you join them?
And last but not least, we wanted an effective way to keep you always in the know. We do this via our blog, Birder's World Field of View. Just last week, it was the place to go for information about BirdsEye, the groundbreaking new app from Kenn Kaufman and eBird. Last night, it was where we reported the heartbreaking news that a Whooping Crane had been shot to death in Indiana. Please check back often for updates on these stories and new ones.
And please let me know what you think about the award-winning BirdersWorld.com. We're proud of our Eddie Award, but not so proud that we think there's nothing we could do better. Please leave a comment. I'd be happy to hear from you. --Chuck Hagner, Editor
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