The Newcastle Evening Chronicle will today receive an award for its "crystal-clear" reporting.

The title is the winner of this year's Plain English Campaign Best Regional Newspaper award, after being nominated for the prize by a reader.

Winners are chosen for the clarity of their reporting, and judges praised the Evening Chronicle for its "wide range of well-written local news stories, good entertainment and sport coverage, and clear regional 'what's on' listings".

They said: "The tabloid format has an uncluttered layout, with striking headings and photography that draw the reader's attention.

"Many people still rely on local papers for the day's news, and the Chronicle is one of the best regional papers we have seen in recent years."

Evening Chronicle deputy editor Chris Styles was today due to travel to London to collect the award from broadcast journalist Mary Nightingale at a ceremony at the Brewery, Chiswell Street, London.

He told HoldtheFrontPage: "We were really pleased when we found out.

"This has come out of the blue - we were nominated by a reader and the first we knew of it was when we got a letter to say we had won.

"It is incredibly gratifying that someone has taken the time to nominate us. Most organisations tend to only get correspondence when people have something to complain about, so this is really good news for us.

"The Evening Chronicle prides itself on telling it like it is so to be chosen as the winner is fantastic."

The Plain English Campaign is a pressure group fighting for public information to be written in plain English.

It has more than 11,000 registered supporters in 80 countries.

Other media winners this year include The Guardian, which was named Best National Newspaper and The Jeremy Vine Show (BBC Radio 2), which was named Best National Radio Programme.