Yorkshire Evening Post sub-editor Liz Carnell has been presented with a prestigious Big Difference Award for making a positive impact on the community.

The journalist, who is also the founder and director of Internet charity Bullying Online, picked up the award at a ceremony at The Queens Hotel in Leeds, where she thanked friends and colleagues at the Yorkshire Evening Post for their support.

She said: “It was a bit like the Oscars with flashing lights and music. I grabbed the chance to say a few words because I couldn’t run this charity without my friends on the Yorkshire Evening Post.

“It’s very stressful and time consuming and the support I get from everyone from the editor Neil Hodgkinson down is what makes it happen.

“We’ve had more than 500,000 visitors to our website in five years and last year I replied to 8,100 e-mails. Any success the charity gets is due to my colleagues too.”

Liz founded the charity Bullying Online with her son John in 1999, and since then it has picked up a clutch of awards, including prizes at the national BT eWell-Being Awards and the regional finals of the National E-Commerce Awards.

It was also highly commended at the 2003 Beacon Fellowship Awards and was a national finalist in the Guardian Charity Awards and a regional finalist in the Broadband Britain Challenge.