Congrats to Boston.com*

Published May 30 2007, 03:36 PM by Adam Reilly

Editor and Publisher announced their 2007 EPpy Awards for interactive media over the weekend, and the Globe's online operation fared pretty well. Boston.com's real-estate section was a finalist in the Best Classified Web Site (1 million plus unique visitors category), and BostonWorks.com (now defunct thanks to the Globe/Monster.com partnership) was a finalist for Best Classified Web Site, sub-1 million unique visitors.

Why the asterisk? Because the top finishers in the marquee category, Best Newspaper-Affiliated Web Site, were NYTimes.com (which won), WashingtonPost.com, and USAToday.com. And this outcome reminded me of the weird bifurcation that still separates the Globe's online edition--which is what you get when you type in "BostonGlobe.com"--from everything else that comprises Boston.com.

I'm not wild about USAToday.com, but NYTimes.com and WashingtonPost.com are excellent. The nomenclature is telling: the Times and the Post treat the paper's content as one part of their greater Web presence, while the Globe still seems to view the Web and the paper as separate entities. And that mindset, in turn, makes it easy for those of us who read the Globe online to miss stuff like this, and this, and this.