Photos: cafebabel.com 2012 Civis Media online media winner, Berlin

Published on April 20, 2012

inside cafébabel

On 18 April 2012 cafebabel.com's executive director Alexandre Heully, 32, and editorial coordinator Katharina Kloss, 31, were in Berlin with members of the official cafebabel.com Berlin blog, Christiane Loetsch and Tobias Sauer, to accept the 2012 Civis media online media award.

L-R: Kloss, Sauer, Loetsch and Heully

This is the third such event of its kind. The award was presented at the 'office' of German chancellor Angela Merkel.

'The internet is the means of providing the most development opportunities,' says Piel.

'It's a chance for more younger people to get involved,' says Heully - after all, cafebabel.com is a multilingual participatory media existing wholly on the contribution of volunteers across Europe and beyond, with its editorial headquarters in Paris. Since its creation in 2001 it's welcomed over 1, 500 writers, translators, bloggers, photographers, videomakers and clocal teams. 'The magazine gets around 400, 000 clicks a month,' explained Kloss.

The jury called cafebabel.com 'unusual, interesting, fresh'. We'll take that as a compliment! 'cafebabel.com reports unusual and interesting stories which are well researched and boldly presented'.

From 84 entries, cafebabel.com pipped its colleagues qantara.de and augenaufbremen.de to the post.

The thanks goes to all of you who propose articles, translations, article ideas, blog posts, photos, videos and local events every day from all over Europe. Without you, this magazine wouldn't be here!

Germany's intergration minister Maria Böhmer emphasised how important it is that medias take on themes such as integration and cultural diversity. For example, one in fifth citizens in Germany have another migration background, but only every fiftieth journalist comes from another background.