Webby winners put on brave face

SAN FRANCISCO - The red carpet was there, and so were the outrageous costumes. A celebrity compere was on hand, along with a bevvy of famous co-presenters. There were lights, video shows, specially commissioned ballet sequences, a full gospel choir and, of course, the inescapable rousing music to enhance the emotion of the moment.

This year's Webby Awards - the internet equivalent of the Oscars - certainly looked and sounded like an awards show. The only problem was that most participants, including several of the nominees and winners, were flat broke and fast heading out of business.

"We're not just here to reward excellence. We're here to celebrate tenacity and survival," the event's organiser, Tiffany Schlain, proclaimed at the very start of the show - fighting words for an organisation whose winners' list from years past now reads more like a war memorial than a hall-of-fame roll call.

Onstage, the Scottish actor Alan Cumming was master of ceremonies, cracking jokes about homeless people begging for 25 cents to buy a batch of shares in once-promising dot-com companies. There were 30 categories of awards, from sport to news to personal websites to the downright weird. One rule gave the evening particular zip: acceptance speeches were restricted to just five words.

"Bankruptcy never felt so good," was the offering of Steven Johnson, publisher of the news and discussion site Plastic, which won in the webzine category. Since starting at the beginning of this year, Plastic has laid off its paid staff entirely and is now run on an emergency basis by volunteers.

The online media site Inside, which won for news, has also been beset by corporate blood-letting: lay-offs, a change of ownership and a furious debate about editorial policy.

Commerce was the most keenly watched category. Travel agencies were in abundance here, and indeed the winner was the ticketing site Travelocity. The acceptance speech: "Thank you - now go away."

- INDEPENDENT