WSJ wins ONA award for general excellence in online journalism

Wall Street Journal editor in chief Matt Murray sent out the following to the staff:

Dear All:

I’m pleased to formally share weekend news that some of you may have heard: On Saturday night, The Wall Street Journal won the prestigious General Excellence in Online Journalism award from the Online News Association at its annual conference in New Orleans. The award honors “a digitally focused news organization that successfully fulfills its editorial mission, effectively serves its audience, maximizes the use of digital tools and platforms and represents the highest journalistic standards.”

Our wide-ranging entry highlighted the work by our R&D team for their innovative tools; the creation of Elevated Discourse and the new Audience Voice reporting team; our redesigned iPad app; the Future of Everything offerings; the debut of conference calls with editors and reporters; our off-platform storytelling; our data visualizations, 3D work and animated explainers; our partnerships with Apple News, Twitter and Gimlet; and the dynamic paywall strategies.

The entry reflects the scope of the work being done inside the Journal newsroom and across Dow Jones. The award itself provides us a welcome moment to step back from our daily efforts to reflect upon the cumulative impact of all the things happening to transform and advance our presence in the digital age.

Hundreds of our colleagues are working full-time on initiatives for this critical task, and all deserve our thanks and support. More broadly, this truly is a staff- and companywide recognition. Every one of us must be engaged in the ongoing work of bringing the superb and unique journalism of the Journal and Dow Jones forward into a new era in a fast-changing industry. It is of course sometimes challenging. But this is one more sign that your hard work and success is paying off for our readers and being recognized by our peers.

Matt