ONA finalists

The contenders in the Online News Association competition I helped judge over the weekend are now posted. Local finalists include the L.A. Times Outdoors section, the Orange County Register's series on toxic candy, earthquake coverage by the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the Ventura County Star website and Mark Glaser's columns in the Online Journalism Review. An innovative street reporting project by USC students called Making It in L.A. also made the finalist list. The ONA release explains when the winners will be announced and how the judging worked, including a process of recusal so that judges did not participate in discussion of projects where they had a conflict of interest.