T-Squared: Apparently, We're Generally Excellent

At last night's Online Journalism Awards, presented as part of the annual Online News Association conference, The Texas Tribune won the General Excellence award for "small" sites (100,000-999,999 monthly unique visitors). According to the ONA, the category "honors a website that successfully fulfills its editorial mission, effectively serves its audience, maximizes the use of the Web's characteristics and represents the highest journalistic standards." Of course this is a big honor and a big surprise, considering that we're less than a year old and the competition in our category was formidable: ProPublica, which won a Pulitzer Prize this year, and Voice of San Diego, the gray eminence of the nonprofit news universe. We continue to be amazed by and grateful for the response to our hard work. Thanks to the judges and to all of you who've embraced the Trib so quickly.