“Your guide to a better future.” It’s not just a tagline for CNET. It’s our commitment to uncover the big, complicated issues affecting the way we live and work and write stories in a way that leaves you smarter and better able to take action. Ambitious, quality journalism plays a critical role in how we fulfill this mission.
Which is why I was heartened to see CNET take home six Eddie & Ozzie awards on Tuesday night. We won an Ozzie design award for our site redesign, which signaled our ambition to provide expertise across a wider spectrum of topics when it launched in April. Our editorial team won five awards for stories that covered critical topics including climate change, accessibility and just how safe the upcoming metaverse will be from harassment.
While the glass plaques are nice, what’s more important are the stories and the impact they have had on you, our audience.
Climate change, for instance, is one of the most critical issues of our time, and CNET has stayed on top of it. Our coverage of the United Nations’ climate change conference, COP26, won recognition for its on-location reporting. It was an important enough event that we sent CNET Senior European Correspondent Katie Collins to Glasgow, Scotland, to write about the big trends and movements forming there, everything from the fight for climate justice to how women have battled to make their voices heard there.
CNET Science Editor Jackson Ryan also doubled down on climate change. As part of his ongoing coverage of this important topic, Ryan traveled to Antarctica to chronicle the effect that carbon dioxide emissions have had on the region and its fragile ecosystem. His package won for best series of consumer technology and science stories.
This is Ryan’s second award for that series. He also won the Australian Museum Eureka Award for Science Journalism for the same series last month – and he put together a short video summarizing why those stories matter.
Jackson Ryan/CNET
You can expect to see even more climate change stories in the near future from our team because the effect of these environmental changes are affecting all of us in ways we need to understand.
The metaverse is another tech buzzword that’s emerged over the last two years, which is why CNET Senior Social Media Reporter Queenie Wong dug into the cache of leaked documents from the Facebook Papers to uncover that Meta was already struggling with harassment in the early days of virtual reality. Her story won an award for best consumer analysis.
Knowing whether you can trust a review on Amazon has become even more important as consumers embrace online shopping, so CNET Senior eCommerce Reporter Laura Hautala spent time figuring out just how big a problem it is at the world’s largest e-commerce site. Her breakdown of the never-ending cycle of fake reviews, aided by animated graphics from CNET Designer Robert Rodriguez, spells out how prevalent fake reviews are and why you should be wary of the recommendations you read. Her story won the best single article in the consumer technology and science category.
Accessibility is another issue our audience seeks guidance on and it’s a topic we’ve covered for the past several years as part of our Tech Enabled series. CNET Senior Media Reporter Joan Solsman took an inside look behind the making of the Oscar-winning film, CODA and how the filmmakers worked to build an authentic world that fairly represented the deaf community. Her story won an award for best consumer culture story.
CNET’s ability to help guide you as the future unfolds is, as I said, only possible because of the time and effort our talented and dogged storytellers — our reporters, editors, designers, photographers and videographers – spend on producing the stories that matter to you. We hope you’ll take the time to read through some of our award-winning work.
A complete list of winners is available on the Eddie & Ozzies website.
