Congratulations to all the bloggers who won German broadcaster Deutsche-Welle's annual ten-language blog competition, The BOBs, this weekend. I was honored to join the jury for the second year in a row, but was unable to make the trip to Berlin for personal reasons. While the other English judge, Mark Glaser of PBS' Mediashift, represented English bloggers on-site in Berlin, I voted virtually in three categories:

User prizes

Jury award winners

The user prize is a particularly special, grassroots award. As I wrote in 2005,

"You may ask, who are we to say who's best? That's exactly what I wondered when I was invited to join the other jurors....The public nomination process [e.g., user prize] is the big reason I'm interested in these awards. At a time when international events demand and deserve authentic, independent writing, reporting and insight about current events, bloggers around the world are chipping away at rhetoric to deliver the real thing."

I think Black Looks is one of the best one-woman blogs of conscience in the world today. Mark and I also placed it on the list of ten blogs we considered for jury awards. I first reviewed Black Looks for Jay Rosen's PressThink in 2005:

"Blogger Sokari says she lives in Spain under the “guise” of being an organic farmer, but her heart belongs to Africa. The result, Black looks, delivers media commentary and news infused with an expat’s love and longing for home. Joining Sokari with occasional guest posts is Ike Okunta, a contributor to Nigerian daily newspaper This Day. For people used to skimming foreign news shorts on page A-29 about legalizing prostitution, child slavery and the ongoing use of rape as torture, Sokari’s black looks do what news reports should: Put preventable human horror front and center, where it disturbs and compels. Sokari, for example, doesn’t just write about backalley abortion in Africa, but follows up with a request for help to readers on behalf of a woman in Addis Ababba whose “time is running out.” This blog is one of the most compelling cases for citizen journalism I think I’ve ever read."

Mark and I had a high standard to meet with the jury awards for best overall blog and best English blog, since the exceptional Global Voices Online won best English language blog in last year's competition. We agreed that the Sunlight Foundation was our top recommendation and apparently so did the rest of the jury after Mark's presentation. His key points are quoted in DW's announcement of the winners here:

"The Sunlight Foundation blog is a group of people who are not only writing about transparency in American politics, they are helping motivate their audience to uncover wrongdoing and shine a light on how the US Congress operates," said US jury member Mark Glaser. "Not only are they fighting corruption, but they are also creating tools so that average citizens can become watchdogs on their own.

"The group also pulled off one of the coups of the American blogosphere this year by bringing together liberal and conservative bloggers in its 'Exposing Earmarks' project," Glaser said, adding that the project exposed 1,800 cases of hidden funding in a legislative bill and led to a new transparency law in the United States."

What better use of the personal printing press than voter empowerment and an opportunity to get more involved in running this country -- whatever your politics?  I can't think of one, as you can probably guess given BlogHer's devotion to omnipartisanship and do-ocracy. The Sunlight Foundation is in a strong position to join Factcheck.org and provide the world with exceptional, impartial coverage of the real issues and motivations in the American presidential election of 2008.

As for the Best English Weblog, Paidcontent.org was an tough but clear choice. As I told my DW contact, Sean Sinico, when he asked me for a quote for the awards announcement:

"If only all industries were covered as exhaustively as Paidcontent.org covers for-profit media. Nobody -- no newspaper, program or Web site, indeed few analysts -- covers the space as well as the paidContent.org team."

Unfortunately, I couldn't be in Berlin to meet the other judges or to discuss all 15 categories, including the winners in Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Persian, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish, nor did I get a chance to advocate for my nominees for best podcast, corporate blog, "blogwurst" or the important Reporters Without Borders Award. Two Persian blogs won the latter, Kosoof, a photoblog of Iranian dissidents with their families after their release from prison, and Tanine Sokut, which reports on human rights violations and other news that doesn't make the national papers. Watch Persian judge Hoder's brilliant blog for more updates on the importance of acknowledging these blogs.

Lastly, in honor of Deutsche Welle's third annual contest, I'd like to applaud the DW team for the changes they made this year and recommend they grow this successful contest to be more inclusive and more globally relevant.

The German broadcaster has already taken key steps to do so: Last year, I was the lone female judge. This year, six of 13 judges are women. This is only appropriate, given that the majority of Internet users are women in the U.S. and their number is growing quickly on a global level too, if BlogHer's membership rolls are any guide. Now I think the next step for DW's online team is to grow the contest and invite jury members from Africa and Southeast Asia. In addition to considering some of this year's other winners, I recommend Sokari Ekine and Dina Mehta as a great place to begin.

Who else would you recommend Deutsche Welle consider?

Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder (RSS | Surfette