Award: Best Community Site or Blog (Non-Profit)

Blogs and community sites that focus on particular domains or issues have become an increasingly important route by which news can reach the public that would otherwise be neglected by, or unknown to, the formal media. In addition, many provide skilled analysis, as well as an opportunity for additional facts and opinion to be aggregated and consolidated.

It will (again) be no surprise to many that I would like to honor, as the recipient of the first award in this category:

Pamela Jones - Groklaw.net

Almost immediately following her first posting on May 16, 2003, Pamela has had an enormous and loyal following. Her ongoing dedication to investigative journalism in defense of Free and Open Source Software is well-known to friend and foe (most notably, SCO) alike. More recently she has supported a variety of open standards-related causes as well, including by championing the efforts of Peter Quinn and the Information Technology Division of Massachusetts to mandate use of the OpenDocument format by the Executive Agencies of the Commonwealth for archival purposes.

When folks give awards, they tend to overstate what one has accomplished, which is very sweet, but I'm also very happy that our work here in covering the Massachusetts ODF/open standards story has been appreciated. Groklaw's goal is to explain what is happening, so people understand the deeper legal/tech aspects of a story in the news. It's a group effort, so any award to Groklaw is to all of us.