The 2007 Webby awards were really, really, really long, but not long enough to blame my waiting a full day to write about them. I can't really blame the after-party either, though I enjoyed it. I've just been doing what I do in New York and D.C. -- meeting with all kinds of great people who don't live in San Francisco -- which isn't leaving me much time to write.
Still, I missed San Francisco and the San Francisco Webbys a little bit this week. The big corporate event at Cipriani Wall Street was very different from the last Webby event I attended, at the Phoenix Hotel bar in the Tenderloin in 2003, when the party was really over, post-boom, and we had to buy our own drinks. The New York awards are much more than ever about the business of the Web, with a special tribute to eBay's Meg Whitman and awards for Bank of America's Online Banking and Yahoo Real Estate, alongside good causes like Nothing but Nets, a global campaign to fight malaria by spreading mosquito nets where they're needed, and of course Web originals like the Onion and Salon. I missed Webby founders Tiffany Schlain and Maya Draisin, although hanging out with Craig Newmark cured my homesickness for a while. I enjoyed emcee Rob Corddry and his scrotum-humor, but I agreed with the blip.tv guys that "he was funnier on 'The Daily Show.'" I still miss him there.
My Webby acceptance speech -- "The Pulitzers are history" -- probably wasn't the best way to launch my campaign to open the Pulitzer Prizes to Salon and other Web independents. Oh well, that will have to wait until next year. Until then, it was great to be the People's Voice winner, and add a big new Webby to the pile of them we won back in the day. Thanks to our readers, who made it happen.
I'm off to our Washington, D.C., bureau, but as I leave the hotel MSNBC is reporting that Lynne Cheney is on a short list of contenders to replace Wyoming Sen. Craig Thomas, who died this week. Wonkette is reporting that she'll only get there if Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal picks her from a list of three Republicans submitted by the state GOP -- and he might if he decides she'd be the easiest to beat, since he wants to run for Thomas' seat. Paris Hilton gets out of jail after only two days, and Lynne Cheney might get to go to the Senate? Not a good week for those who believe in justice or karma.
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