The News & Observer team of Travis Long, Shawn Rocco and Rob Roberts has captured first place in the Features Video category of the Best of Photojournalism 2008 Awards, an international photography competition hosted by the National Press Photographers Association.

The honor was awarded for "Dail: Life Unbarred," the video of Dwayne Dail, the North Carolina man convicted of rape and freed from prison 18 years later after DNA evidence proved him innocent. The video accompanied a series of news stories by N&O staff writer Mandy Locke on Dail's release and his reintroduction into society.

The announcement of the winners was made Sunday, with additional judging continuing in other Web categories.

The award won by the N&O team was in the top Features Video category, reserved for news organizations averaging more than 1 million page views per month. Other papers placing in that category included Newsday, The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star.

Winners in the other two categories of the Web video competition -- documentary and news -- included The Washington Post, Detroit Free Press, The New York Times and The Dallas Morning News.

This is the first year The News & Observer has entered the video portion of the contest, according to Scott Sharpe, N&O picture editor for multimedia.

"They put a tremendous amount of work and passion into this piece. ... There were others who offered input and support and advice during the editing phase in a broad team approach that included Tim Lee from our graphics department and Karen Mann from the online content team," Sharpe said.

The contest is sponsored this year by Apple, Canon USA, NPPA and The Poynter Institute for Media Studies. More than 21,000 entries from over 140 countries were submitted in this year's competition, according to the NPPA Web site.

Watch "Dail: Life Unbarred" at www.newsobserver.com /1181/story/819065.html.