Chronicle takes top Rockower prize for online excellence

Chronicle takes top Rockower prize for online excellence

The Jewish Chronicle’s new Web site, thejewishchronicle.net, has won first place at the 2009 Simon Rockower Awards for most outstanding Web site.

“Serving a community that extends from Western Pennsylvania to West Virginia, this site is not an online version of a print publication, but a multimedia hub with its own identity,” the judge said. “I, for one, couldn’t stop reading articles and I live nowhere in Western PA.”

The Chronicle competes in Division B of the Rockowers, which includes Jewish publications with circulations under 15,000. In Division A, the outstanding Web site award went to the Forward.

Chronicle staff writer Toby Tabachnick also took a second place award for best personality profile. She won for her story, “Angel in Squirrel Hill,” which profiled Squirrel Hill resident Stanley Cohen and his efforts to free a Canadian Jew, Michael Kapoustin, from a Bulgarian prison.

Presented by the American Jewish Press Association, the Simon Rockower Awards recognize journalistic excellence in the Jewish media throughout North America. It has been described as the Pulitzer Prize for the Jewish press.

Thejewishchronicle.net, which went live last October, is the one-stop shop for everything that happens in the western Pennsylvania and West Virginia Jewish communities. It tells the stories of the region’s Jews through straight news, features, columns, opinions, a photo gallery, blogs and video.

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