The Northern Echo has been named Newsquest‘s daily newspaper of the year.
The North-East newspaper beat the competition to win the award at the Newsquest Editorial and Newspaper Sales conference, held at the Sheraton Skyline Hotel, near Heathrow Airport.
Judges were impressed with The Northern Echo’s quality of stories, clean page design, as well as the paper’s commercial side.
The judges’ citation read: ‘The Northern Echo stood head and shoulders above the other entries as a consistent, assertive and imaginative newspaper.
‘Great stories, good clean design and strong use of pictures, and plenty of web promotion. Good-looking commercial platforms and easy to navigate – all through, a paper to be proud of.’
Newsquest owns 17 daily titles and 300 weekly newspapers in the UK. Newsquest North-East, which manages The Northern Echo, The Darlington and Stockton Times and The Advertiser Series, also won the team-of-the-year award.
The company was given the award for the inventive launch of The Northern Echo in compact form on February 26, last year, and for the launch of The Durham Times in May last year.
Editor Peter Barron was presented with the award by Newsquest chairman and chief executive Paul Davidson. Barron said: ‘Last year was a historic year for The Northern Echo because of the transition to compact format. This national award is testament to all the hard work that went into making that a success.”
The Westmorland Gazette was named Newsquest’s weekly paper of the year.
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