BBC News website wins major award

The BBC News website has won the Online News Association's internet award for breaking news, for its coverage of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Online Journalism Awards judges praised the site's live updates page for being comprehensive, up to date and for the way it incorporated social media.

Other nominations were the Houston Chronicle for Hurricane Ike and the New York Times for the Hudson plane crash.

The New York Times won the main award for general excellence in news.

BBC News was also nominated in this category, and correspondent Mark Easton's UK blog was nominated in the blogging category.

The Online Journalism Awards, held in San Francisco, were launched in May 2000.

They are administered by the Online News Association, in partnership with the University of Miami's School of Communication.

Judges said the BBC News website's live updates page for Mumbai was rich in primary source information and had hundreds of comments on each post.

They described it as "an unassuming-looking but engaging blog that covers many different things and covers it well".

BBC News website features editor Giles Wilson, accepting the award, said it was a "great honour for the team to be recognised against such strong competition as the best in the world for covering breaking news".

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