In its first participation, Al-Jazirah Daily has won the first title of the
Digital Excellence Award in its e-media category. The award is highly valued in Saudi Arabia, since it is granted by the Ministry of communications and Information Technology on the basis of highly selective international arbitration standards. It is one of the first awards of its type in the Arabic world.
In this third copy which has been won by Al-Jazirah, the award witnessed high competition among 180 local participants. Al-Riyadh Daily came second, whereas the Arabic Information Network (Naseej) came third. The Ministry of communications and Information Technology has launched the award in 2005 for realizing the goals of the National Plan for Communications and Information Technology. The award focuses on encouraging and enriching the Arabic web content and relative applications, motivating all initiatives that contribute to Arabic web content, creating awareness of the essentiality of having superior websites, and supporting all individual and /or institutional efforts to develop and design Arabic websites. In addition, the award aims at encouraging intellectual and technical innovations as well as creating Arabic digital environments that align with the traditions and ethics of the Saudi society. The award covers many categories, including e-Media, e-Business, e- Government, e-Culture, e- Education, and e-Health.
A panel of specialized experts and arbitrators participate in the award's committee where more than 86 arbitrational standards are applied. The panel considers content quality, comprehensiveness, originality, depth, easy browsing, attractive designing, added values, professionalism, strategic significance in contributing to the development of the IT community in Saudi Arabia, etc. Additional standards for the e-media branch include comprehensive archiving, capability of browsing through writers and newspaper issues, possibility of printing and saving, availability of other web services such as advertising, subscribing, etc.
Al-Jazirah website enjoys a number of features, including round the clock updates, the three editions of Al-Jazirah Daily, RSS feeds, opinion polls, unlimited search, mailing list, op-ed contributors, browsing without restrictions, archiving, SMS news alert, classified ads, news on PDA, Ad price calculator, together with other supporting services in a number of domains.
Historical Brief
Al-Jazirah, the first newspaper to launch a website, has been granted the award in appreciation of its pioneering role in spreading e-culture in the Kingdom.. It has participated greatly in consolidating e-culture awareness in the local community by its online publication, educational and cultural programs, Intranet network, and accessibility through a Dial Up system. The efforts of Al-Jazirah to enter the digital world dates back to 1996 when it launched its website in coordination with a service provider from the United States. As the Internet service was not available in the Kingdom at that time Al-Jazirah continued its web services through Bahrain and UAE. Al-Jazirah's pioneering experiences in this regard was crowned by becoming the first and sole Internet service provider among all local newspapers when it was granted the ISP license. The accumulative experiences obtained by Al-Jazirah upon acquiring this license has helped it maintain its position as a leader in this technical field. This has been followed by allocating pages of Al- Jazirah Daily to digital news and information. A further step followed when Al-Jazirah published a specialized weekly under the title "Telecom and Digital World".
Congratulations
The Head of Al-Jazirah Board of Directors Mr. Mutlaq A. Al-Mutlaq extended his congratulations to Al-Jazirah staff on the occasion, denoting that the award winning is the result of the efforts exerted by them all. "Al-Jazirah is the first local newspaper to provide our sons abroad the opportunity of obtaining the news of their nation through its website", he said.
He also extended his appreciations to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology for organizing the competition. "Such competition will assist greatly in paving the way for moving into the IT community", he said.
Al-Jazirah General Manager Mr. Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid said Al- Jazirah has been leading the way for coping with the developments in the technical field for a long time. "It is now picking the fruits of its efforts by winning the first title of the Digital Excellence Award", he said.
Mr. Hamad Al-Malik, Al-Jazirah Editor in Chief, said Al-Jazirah was aware of the importance of investing in technology and manpower. "We founded a training center to acquaint our journalists with the latest media technology", he said. "This step was followed by an unprecedented initiative - the appointment of one of our technological engineers to the post of deputy editor in chief. This move demonstrated Al-Jazirah's realization of the inevitable relation between editorial and production technology in modern journalism".
In addition to Al-Jazirah, Al- Rajhi bank won the e-Business title, whereas Makkah Province won the e-Government title and the Saudi Food and Drug Authority the e-Health title. The Ministry of communications and Information Technology is preparing for organizing a ceremony on Tuesday 24/ 11/1428H in honour of the winners.
