This year’s Regional Press Awards are to go ahead next month despite the forthcoming closure of Press Gazette magazine.

The doomed magazine’s publishers Wilmington Group says it remains “fully committed” to holding the awards which take place in London on 8 May.

But doubts have already been expressed about the long-term future of the awards and their national counterpart the British Press Awards, which were staged last week.

Some media commentators believe Wilmington will struggle to hold on to the awards’ franchises without a journalism news publication to back them up.

Writing on his blog, the former Press Gazette deputy editor Jon Slattery said: “I don’t think the company stands a prayer of keeping the awards without producing a Press Gazette magazine or news website.

“The BPAs don’t belong to Press Gazette. The magazine stepped in at the last minute to help when the Mirror Group decided it didn’t want to run them anymore. They pre-dated the involvement of Press Gazette and look like outliving the magazine.”

Wilmington announced yesterday that next month’s print version of Press Gazette will be the last and that the website will no longer carry breaking news.

Editor Dominic Ponsford and his two full-time and two part-time staff are being made redundant.

Wilmington publishing director Doug Marshall said in an statement yesterday: “Wilmington remains fully committed to holding the Regional Press Awards, which this year are being held on 8 May.

“In such a challenging year for the industry, we believe it’s even more important to recognise and celebrate the successes of regional newspapers.”

Comments

john (08/04/2009 15:45:26)
Press Gazette is lucky to have survived so long. When the office gets one copy and everyone reads it, its paid-for sales were always going nowhere. Why didn’t it stop the print version and go digital, to a subscriber database, then evryone gets their own copy, and paying for it too.