The Manchester Evening News, Oxford Times and Sunday Herald were among the winners at last night’s Newspaper Awards.

The regional titles all picked up top prizes at the event which rewards excellence in newspaper production and is run in association with Production Journal and Fujifilm.

Johnston Press chief executive Tim Bowdler received the award for Personality of the Year.

Manchester Evening News website manchestereveningnews.co.uk scooped the Electronic News Site of the Year prize, beating bbc.co.uk/news, which was highly commended and timesonline.co.uk which was commended.

Other nominees were guardian.co.uk, newburytoday.co.uk, pinkun.com and telegraph.co.uk.

MEN editor Paul Horrocks received the award and said: “It’s a fantastic victory and validates the serious news content that is produced in the paper and on the website.”

Judges praised the MEN website for its contemporary look which they said “successfully combines some style elements of a blog with the sensibilities of a serious news organisation”.

They added: “For a regional news site’s relative budget, MEN offers an impressive range of web delivery mechanisms. Use of audio, video and RSS and the provision of user contributions put the site in the same league as some of the nationals.”

The newspaper was also nominated for the Grand Prix Award for the most significant contribution to future newspaper success for its part paid/part free initiative.

It missed out to News International’s thelondonpaper. The Reading Chronicle’s Polish edition was highly commended.

The Irish News was named Newspaper of the Year (weekdays), with the Reading Evening Post highly commended and the Shropshire Star commended.

The Oxford Times won Weekly Newspaper of the Year title, with The Cumberland News highly commended and the Esher News & Mail commended.

The Oxford Times’ magazine Oxfordshire Limited Edition also won Regional Colour Supplement of the Year.

The Sunday Herald won Newspaper Design of the Year, beating national newspapers The Guardian, The Observer, The Mail on Sunday and The Sunday Times as well as the Lincolnshire Echo.

For a full list of winners, go to
www.newspaperawards.co.uk.

Back to the awards index