The awards ceremony of the 9th DOT Journalism 2021competition for professional and aspiring journalists writing about domains and digital technologies was held during the Russian Internet Week (RIW 20/21). The competition was organized by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ and RAEC with the support of the Smart Internet Foundation, ROCIT and REG.RU.
“When we came up with this competition almost ten years ago, most industry journalists writing about IT did not know the difference between a domain and a website, for example. Our goal was to create a pool of journalists who write professionally about the domain industry – and we succeeded,” said Andrey Vorobyev, Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ.
“I am particularly pleased to see that, along with the journalists who win DOT Journalism awards every year, newcomers participate in the competition, and they are becoming better professionals,” added Yekaterina Vorobyeva, head of the RAEC press service.
It is nice to see journalists who have taken part in the competition more than once among both the participants and winners. This year, entries were accepted in six main categories and one special category. The winners are:
- Best .RU/.РФ domain analytics: Vladimir Zykov, RUNET.NEWS, for covering the problem of domain name inheritance and WHOIS data expansion.
- Best article or a series of publications on domains by one author: Vika Ryabova, D-Russia. Vika writes a lot and regularly about the internet and, in particular, about domains.
- Domain events: Valery Korzhov, Connect: The World of Information Technologies magazine, for an article on the problems of IDN email and Universal Acceptance. This issue is highly relevant. As part of the Поддерживаю.РФ project, active work is now underway to ensure that email addresses using characters of national alphabets are recognized and accepted without issues by all services.
- Regions are everything: Natalya Senchukova, Arkhangelsk newspaper, for an article on domains.
- Special category of the competition partner REG.RU: Yulia Stepanova, Kommersant, for a series of articles on phishing.
Very few entries were received in the categories Domains on TV and Beyond .RU, so the jury decided not to choose winners in these categories this year. However, it turned out that the most active applicants in 2021 were young journalists.
“The rules of the competition state that the organizers can add or remove categories depending on the entries received. Therefore, they added the Young Journalists category. The award went to aspiring journalist Yaroslav Babiychuk from the School Press portal, for the article ‘Internet and incidents in third-world countries,’” announced Tatyana Novikova, curator of the competition and head of special projects of the Coordination Center.
The 10th DOT Journalism competition is scheduled to start in early February 2022. Stay tuned for more news!
