Lexington Herald-Leader website wins Eclipse Award

The website heraldleaderphoto.com, a subsite of Kentucky.com and the

Lexington Herald-Leader, has won the 2007 Media Eclipse Award in the

Audio/Multi-Media Internet category for its coverage of the 2007 Kentucky Derby

(G1), the National Thoroughbred Racing Association announced Friday.

"We are thrilled to win this award because it was a grass roots project,"

said David Stephenson, multi-media editor and content producer of

heraldleaderphoto.com. "There were many photographers, reporters and freelance

contributors who helped make the site a success. It's hard for a newspaper to

hold so much content on the Kentucky Derby, so the possibilities of opening up

coverage in audio, video and photographs on the Web provides us with tremendous

presence for our readers. We covered the small time trainers right to the Queen

of England."

Heraldleaderphoto.com produced wide ranging coverage of Kentucky Derby week,

incorporating multiple platforms of audio, video, slide shows and still

photograph galleries at Churchill Downs. The site contained comprehensive

backstretch interviews with the Derby trainers, and also supplemented it with

the Derby experience, displaying photos from the Barnstable Brown

party, odd videos like one of a Howard Cossell impersonator, celebrity

interviews, and footage of fans racing through the Churchill Downs infield

tunnel.

Stephenson credits the initial success of the site to an early Derby week

video story on Barbaro's seven-day old full brother at Mill Ridge Farm.

"We

received 20,000 hits in the first three days that the story was posted," said

Stephenson. "That got us going."

For the running of the Kentucky Derby, the website team utilized three

cameras to produce a 360-degree panoramic view from under the rail and coupled

it with live audio of the roar of more than 150,000 fans as the horses came down

the stretch. Stephenson credited Herald-Leader Visual Editor Ron Garrison for

bringing the project together.

Honorable mention in the Audio Multi-Media Internet category went to The New

York Times website, nytimes.com, for its Kentucky Derby multi-media coverage,

produced by Matthew Orr and writer Joe Drape.

Judges for the Audio/Multi-Media Internet category were: Brian Horton of

Associated Press Broadcast; Mike Kane, National Museum of Racing and Hall of

Fame; and Mike Farrell, racing journalist and former UPI Radio reporter.

The 37th Annual Eclipse Awards will be held on January 21 at the Beverly

Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.