‘Hottest Place in Hell’ website grabs inaugural DIGIT prize for online journalism

The Sammy Ofer School of Communications at IDC Herzliya, and Google teamed up to launch the NIS 15,000 award.

By LIDAR GRAVÉ-LAZI
Irit Dolev and Einat Fishbein (photo credit: LEEVI WINTER)
Irit Dolev and Einat Fishbein
(photo credit: LEEVI WINTER)
The inaugural DIGIT prize will go to the Hamakom Hachi Ham Bagehinom (“The Hottest Place in Hell”) website and its founders, Irit Dolev and Einat Fishbein, it was announced on Wednesday.
The Sammy Ofer School of Communications at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya and Google teamed up to launch the NIS 15,000 award for journalists and publications engaged in online journalism.
“Hamakom Hachi Ham Bagehinom emblemizes the transition of experienced and excellent journalists to the digital platform,” the award committee wrote.
“The website provides a door to an alternate challenging and interesting discussion while taking advantage of the digital with an emphasis on distribution on social networks.
We hope that our choice will help the brave step represented by ‘The Hottest Place in Hell’ to gain momentum and elevate the online journalistic product in Israel,” it continued.
The prize will be awarded during the third annual DIGIT conference, the only press conference dealing exclusively with online media, on March 10 at the Interdisciplinary Center. The conference will focus on the major issues that concern the digital media in Israel and abroad and will include media master classes by senior industry executives such as journalists, editors, designers and programmers, panel discussions and lectures.
The committee reviewed dozens of candidates.
“The volume and quality of nominations indicate an intensification of digital journalism in Israel, in a wide variety of areas, emphases and journalistic skills,” said Dr.
Noam Lemelshtrich Latar, dean of the Sammy Ofer School of Communications, Paul Solomon, head of Communications and Public Affairs at Google for Israel, the Middle East, Africa, Greece and Turkey, and Roy Katz, founder and producer of the DIGIT conference, in a joint statement.