The Twitter competitions in New York known as the Shorty Awards officially declared Razon’s account among its six finalists in its search for the Best Journalist in Twitter for 2009, outdoing more than 40 nominees this year, making him the first Filipino journalist to be nominated in the official category lists of the competition for this year.

“Change for the better must quickly be done, when you see the light you should act at once, or you will feel the heat that will eventually come,” is just one of the many tweets by Daniel Razon. He had been using Twitter since 2009 to reach and interact with his fans and supporters.

Razon regularly updates his Twitter followers with inspiring, educational and Bible-based content amidst his very tight schedule as a television host of many programs on UNTV. On the height of the catastrophic earthquake that shook Haiti, Razon twit: “The IRC estimated 50,000 people were killed in cataclysmic earthquake in Haiti. Are you wondering why earthquake happens? Job 9:5-6.”

Other finalists in the same category are William Bonner of Jornal National (National Journal), Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, Ukrainian journalist Dan Matteush and Steven Ertelt of Lifenews.com.

The results followed after a very strict evaluation by the panel of judges of the Shorty Awards, considered the Oscars for real-time, short form content on Twitter. The Real Time Academy of Short Form Arts and Sciences based their judgment on the number of votes, reasons given in nominations, answers to the Shorty Interview, and the content of the finalists’ tweets.

The prominent members of the Real Time Academy include Flickr and Hunch co-founder Catarina Fake, rapper MC Hammer, actress and philanthropist Alyssa Milano, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and NYTimes.com Columnist David Pogue. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Knight Foundation President and CEO Alberto Ibarguen, Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito, Blip.tv co-founder Dina Kaplan, and Columbia Journalism School contributing editor Prof. Sree Sreenivaan, are also among the Academy members tasked to select the winners of the best producers of short real time content. The awarding ceremonies will be on March 3, 2010 at the Times Center in The New York Times Tower.

Twenty-six official categories ranging from arts, finance, celebrity, food, science, music, politics, travel, and others were opened. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, one of the leading lights in advancing journalism worldwide, supports the event.

Prominent for pioneering innovative public service works, Razon, or Kuya Daniel to his television followers, is the leading advocate of an advocacy for change, Isang Araw Lang (Just One Day) which aims at calling everyone to share good deeds either by joining a good public service cause or inspiring others to do the same.

Another Filipino is leading in the competition and now shortlisted among the finalists in the community category. Bro. Eliseo Soriano of the Members Church of God International and host of the Ang Dating Daan religious program on UNTV is nominated in the Best Educator category.

Meanwhile, Ms. Angel Locsin, a fellow Filipino actress, is the second to be nominated in the official list under the celebrity category.

Written by Chris Anne Gonzales