Awards for the dead

Congratulations to the folks at "Heavy Duty Trucking" for winning the Grand Neal Award from American Business Media.
HDT, a monthly magazine owned by Newport Communications Group, picked up the prize for a special report called "Fuel Crisis Survival."
It's a pretty good piece of reporting and writing. And the people involved should be proud of their work.
But seriously, wouldn't it make more sense in 2009 to give the top editorial award in B2B to something that at least had a Web component?
You can read "Fuel Crisis Survival" on the HDT site ... but it's hardly a top-notch Web experience. This is shovelware, pure and simple.  Take a look. See if you can spot anything that indicates anyone at the company has even looked at this thing online.

There was one other bit of news from this year's Neal ceremony that I found a little disconcerting.
Crain's FinancialWeek and FinancialWeek.com picked up a number of awards -- including Best Web Site.
And as close followers of the B2B world know, the FinancialWeek brand is no more. The print product shut down in December. The website closed earlier this month.