After looking through the projects, I found some very impressive photographers, videographers and multimedia producers that I hadn’t discovered before. I posted a few Twitter handles at the end of each project to help follow some of their latest work. A lot of these projects involved large teams and I couldn’t mention everyone. Let me know if there’s anyone that I missed and I’ll add them to the list.

The first five entries were nominated in the “Current News Coverage” category. According to the entry requirements, the judges were looking for “creative and innovative approaches to the practice, presentation and delivery of news & documentary programming.” Enjoy!

1) Behind the Veil

Globe and Mail – A six-part multimedia series that talks with women from all walks of life about their lives in one of the most dangerous cities in Afghanistan.

Reporting by Jessica Leeder and photography by Paula Lerner. The multimedia producer was Jayson Taylor (@jaysontaylor) with design and development by Chris Manza.

2) Flipped

New York Times – How private equity dealmakers can win while their companies lose. A link to the story is available here.

Produced by Amy O’Leary (@amyoleary), Jigar Mehta (@jigarmehta), Krishnan Vasudevan (@kvasudevan), Zach Wise (@zlwise), Tom Jackson and others.

3) Times of Crisis

Reuters – In-depth multimedia charting the year of global upheaval following the collapse of Lehman Brothers. See how lives everywhere have changed as a divergent world embarks on a new era of historic uncertainty.

Produced by MediaStorm’s Brian Storm (@BrianStorm), Alba Mora Roca (@albamoraroca), Bob Sacha (@bobsacha), Tim Klimowicz, Jacky Myint (@jmyint) and Jason Burfield (@jburfield). Also produced by Reuters VP of Pictures Ayperi Karabuda Ecer and Head of Visual Projects Jassim Ahmad (@JassimA). Reuters is on Twitter at @reuterspictures.

4) Disabled in Vietnam

San Jose Mercury News – Disabled students in Vietnam find hope in an IT Training Program.

Produced by LiPo Ching.

5) Surviving the Tsunami: Stories of Hope

Reuters, Red Cross and Media Storm – Combining imagery by Reuters photojournalists with eyewitness testimony and interactive graphics, Surviving the Tsunami reveals the strength of the human spirit in the face of catastrophe. These are stories of compassion and hope. The project marks the fifth anniversary of the Indian Ocean Tsunami. Produced by MediaStorm’s Brian Storm (@BrianStorm), Eric Maierson (@gboy) and Tim Klimowicz. Also produced by Reuters VP of Pictures Ayperi Karabuda Ecer and Head of Visual Projects Jassim Ahmad (@JassimA). Reuters is on Twitter at @reuterspictures.

The next six projects were nominated in the documentary category. They’re all pretty awesome…

1) Alabama Homeboys

LA Times – For three years, L.A.’s Homeboy Industries, a nationally recognized gang intervention organization, has sent a select few of its members on an extraordinary pilgrimage to work with impoverished kids in Alabama Village, Prichard, Ala. Tucked away in the southwest corner of the state, the small community is rural, largely segregated, oppressed by violence and ignored by the surrounding community. Its young people have come to know their enclave as “Death Valley.”

The poverty of the children of Alabama Village is shocking — even for the Homeboys, who come from the tough inner-city streets of Los Angeles. But there is also much the Homeboys recognized; drug dealers, shootings, dead-end choices and the desperate situation of youth facing no way out.

It is in these children 2,000 miles away that the visitors from L.A.find their calling.

Produced by Katy Newton, Liz O Baylen, Sean Connelley, Mary Cooney and others. You can also follow @LATimesPhotos and @LATimesVideo on Twitter.

2) Driftless: Stories from Iowa

MediaStorm – The thriving Midwestern family farm is no longer, having been choked by industrialized agriculture and replanted with subdivisions. A shifting economy, combined with an old-fashioned lifestyle that doesn’t translate from generation to generation, is forever altering the landscape.

Carrying one camera and one lens, Danny Wilcox Frazier walks Iowa’s gravel roads, gets his feet wet in the milking barn, pulls up a stool in the small-town bar. Through black-and-white photographs, he makes a record of his own emotions as he travels through the state. What results is a complex portrait of a well-loved American landscape at a time of enormous cultural change.

Produced by Danny Wilcox Frazier, Brian Storm (@BrianStorm), Eric Maierson (@gboy), Taylor Gentry, Tim Klimowicz, Jessica Stuart (@jessstuart) and Tim Hussin (@timhussin).

3) Secret Life of Scientists

NOVA – Welcome to “The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers,” a web-only series that shows what happens when the lab coats come off. Meet intriguing scientists and engineers. Watch their videos. Ask them questions. Find out how their surprising secret lives fuel their work, and vice versa.

4) One in 8 Million

New York Times – New York is a city of characters. The Green Thumb, whose community garden in a Brooklyn housing project shows children that eggs don’t come from eggplant. The Dictaphone Doctor, last of a dying breed. The Jury Clerk, who says ‘Good morning’ 200 times a day, and means it. The Teenage Mother. The Singing Waitress. The Blind Wine-Taster. The Tabloid Photographer. The Iraq Veteran. The Walking Miracle.

Each week in 2009, The New York Times introduced such individuals in sound and images, inviting ordinary people to tell their extraordinary stories — their passions and problems, relationships and routines, vocations and obsessions.

Series produced by Sarah Kramer and Alexis Mainland (@lexinyt), photographs by Todd Heisler (@heislerphoto) and interactive development by Tom Jackson.

5) A Life Alone

Soul of Athens – Farmer, husband, father and now widower. For 63 years, Tom Rose and his wife, Mary, built a life together on his family farm on Canaanville Road. Then last year Mary passed away, leaving Rose to face the future alone, surrounded by a lifetime of memories. Impressive work by Maisie Crow.

6) Ted Kennedy: A Life in Politics

The Boston Globe – Affectionately called Ted or Teddy by voters and those closest to him, he was known to the public for a booming voice and occasionally boisterous — and some notoriously reckless — behavior.

If you haven’t had enough yet, here are a couple more posts that are worth checking out. Both are great blogs and filled with a lot of awesome projects!

Multimedia Shooter: 13 Projects Worth Watching
MediaStorm: (16 projects) Worth Watching

Here’s a collection of the top projects mentioned during the chat. #wjchat is a weekly Twitter conversation for web journalists. We talk about all things content, technology, ethics and business of journalism on the web. The next chat will be on Wednesday, March 3 at 7:00 PM CT. In the meantime, you can follow my multimedia Twitter list for additional links from some of the industry’s top multimedia professionals.

Journey to the End of Coal

Journey to the End of Coal is a Web documentary by Samuel Bollendorff and Abel Ségrétin. The project tells the story of millions of Chinese coal miners who are risking their lives to satisfy their country’s appetite for economic growth.

Project recommended by @multimedialinks.

Iraqi Kurdistan

Iraqi Kurdistan is an expansive look into the daily lives of the Kurdish people of northern Iraq. These images provide an alternative perspective on a changing culture, one different from the destruction and discord that dominates so much media coverage of the region.

Documented by Ed Kashi and produced by MediaStorm, the photographs of Iraqi Kurdistan are presented in flipbook-style animation; gradual changes between still images simulate motion. The thousands of images that comprise this project are as striking as they are bountiful.

Project recommended by @madshrew.

Haiti 360

Haiti 360 is an interactive video showing the destruction in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, following the earthquake. The video ran on CNN.com and was produced by Immersive Media, a company specializing in 360 video. Side note, the video camera uses 11 lenses and looks like a little disco ball. More information on panoramic photos, video and how to make them is available from 10,000 Words.

Project recommended by @motownmedia.

Mapping LA

Mapping L.A. is resource from the Los Angeles Times to map boundaries, demographics, schools and news within the city. The site was built entirely with free and open-source software, including Django, jQuery, OpenLayers and PostgreSQL.

Project recommended by @michelleminkoff.

Operation Pedro Pan

A database designed to connect with family, friends and fellow Pedro Pan children around the world. The Miami Herald’s goal was to unite people and create a website to preserve the memories of those who made the journey on those flights

Project recommended by @amysimons.

Frozen Land, Forgotten People

In 1966, Bureau of Indian Affairs Commissioner Robert L. Bennett outlawed development on 1.6 million acres of desert in northeastern Arizona that was claimed by both the Navajo nation and the Hopi tribe. When the freeze ended, many residents didn’t know where to begin. Produced by the @multimedialinks.

Luge Crash at the Olympics

Nodar Kumaritashvili, a luge athlete, was killed during a training run on the Olympic track, which was the fastest track in the world. The frame by frame graphic shows the athlete’s last run and what went wrong on the final turn.

Please note: the final frame of the project shows the moment of the Georgia athlete’s death. For an interesting article on whether the New York Times should have included the image, check out this post by Poynter’s Al Tompkins.

Fifty People One Question

Fifty People One Question is an ongoing social experiment and film series exploring human connections through people and place. The project began in New Orleans in 2008 and has since traveled across the globe, touching millions of viewers. Along the way, the films have captured a small slice of humanity; to discover dreams, losses, reflections, stories and secrets, some shared and some completely unrepeatable.

Project recommended by @3ba.

The Destruction in Port-au-Prince

View satellite photos from GeoEye that show Port-au-Prince before and after the Jan. 12 earthquake. The interactive graphic does an excellent job showing the magnitude of the earthquake’s damage. Produced by The New York Times.

Project recommended by @ethanklapper.

My Picks

Streetlight

Ethiopia is a country rich in culture, history, culinary art and street children. In the capital Addis Ababa more than 100,000 people live on the street – most of them children and youth. Streetlight is a web feature that shows that work carried out by Hope For Children and it has be produced for the organization to create awareness for fundraising purposes.

Streetlight was a commissioned project produced by the Bombay Flying Club for the NGO Hope for Children.

Terremoto en Haití

Elmundo put together an impressive multimedia presentation following the Haiti earthquake. I originally found the project on Innovative Interactivity and was very, very impressed. Admittedly, I couldn’t understand most of the project (my spanish skills are a little rusty), but there were a lot of interesting interactive elements and a nice mix between factual context and emotional storytelling.

Death Perceptions

For most of us, death is occasional, peripheral. But for some, death is part of the job. And for a few, it is the job. This series examines death through the eyes of professionals who face it every day.

Project produced by The Columbus Dispatch.

Times of Crisis

Times of Crisis uses in-depth multimedia to chart the year of global upheaval following the collapse of Lehman Brothers. See how lives have changed as a divergent world embarks on a new era of historic uncertainty.

Reuters and MediaStorm produced this project collaboratively.

Still looking for more inspiration? Try some of these posts

Innovative Interactivity: Top 50 Multimedia Sites of 2009
MediaStorm: Projects Worth Watching
Multimedia Shooter: 9 Multimedia Projects You Must Experience