Judith Townend and Laura Oliver's Best of the media 2008 and a punch-up prediction

Journalism.co.uk reporters Judith Townend and Laura Oliver pick their Best of 2008.

Best old/trad media of the year:
(LO) The National - showing us that Dubai is still a place for new life in the print industry. Guardian (an obvious choice and perhaps not just old/trad media any more) - in particular for its expansion into America, coverage of the US election, investment in online.
(JT) Private Eye - only Lord Gnome could condescendingly shun the online and get away with it (well, for the time being at least) Water-tight libel defences and the best leaks in medialand help too.

Best new media of the year:
(LO) Big fan of Daylife as used by the Washington Post to display its Olympics and US Election coverage - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/olympics/longterm/2008/beijing/photos/
NYTimes APIs - the web's all about openness and the NYTimes' releases of data prove its commitment to this.
Ushahidi.com - Kenyan site used to report on post-election violence in the country, connecting bloggers and citizens with well-needed news and information.
(Sorry that's three - and I love videojug.com too. Very clever)
(JT) Ooo. How to choose? Most recently, Publish2.com for truly innovative and clean aggregation of links and content, designed with journalists' needs in mind. Let's hope more journalists get on board with it to make it really work.

Best story of the year:
(LO) Mumbai was a development of cit-j reporting from the coverage of the California wildfires last year, but is a symbol of a year when online media and news reporting stole the show (for good and bad) - whether it was news breaking on Twitter, recycled stories on United Airlines causing a fall in share prices, the power of Peston's blog or Obama's use of online campaign tools.
(JT) Can we pick two? Bizarre: Steve Jobs / CNN's citizen journalism antics. Serious: If we're assessing online impact, then Mumbai. While it wasn't extraordinary in terms of citizen media (contrary to mainstream reports, user generated content was relatively low compared to other global events) it provided one of the best and most chilling examples for using Twitter to follow events live, and read almost instantaneous 140 character updates from people actually on the ground, giving the MSM a run for its money.

Prediction for 2009:
(LO) RBI's constituent titles get broken up and sold piecemeal; a UK national newspaper goes bankrupt (or maybe a Russian millionaire Abramovich style will sweep in and buy it up); Twitter gets bought (all sweeping and more than one prediction again, sorry!).
(JT) Roy Greenslade and Justin Williams end up in a real-life punch-up at a glitzy media event after the Prof accidentally spills champagne over Williams' blackberry (it's all live Twittered and captured on iPhone video of course) .

Monday: Patrick Smith, UK correspondent of paidContent. It's Patrick's job to ferret out stories about how people make money out of the internet. Something we all want to know. Don't miss it!

Rest of the Best of, so far: Paul Linford, Adrian Monck , Grey Cardigan , Jean Morgan, Steve Busfield, Neil Fowler, Ian Reeves, Dominic Ponsford, Michael Crozier.