Country’s biggest daily wins big at Qantas Awards

Country’s biggest daily wins big at Qantas Awards

The New Zealand Herald collected 23 wins including the coveted Best Weekly Newspaper title for The Weekend Herald at the Qantas Media Awards held in Wellington on Friday (May 13).

The New Zealand Herald won eight of the 13 categories in news reporting, dominating the group, and picked up four more awards for both feature writing and columnists.

Twenty people were recognised across a number of fields including Rod Emmerson who was named cartoonist of the year for the second consecutive year. Sub-editor Arthur Whelan won for best headline writing, senior photographer Brett Phibbs won best feature picture and writer Angela Gregory took out both the news and feature writing awards for coverage of Pacific affairs.

The New Zealand Herald won the best sports section for SuperSport as well as the best travel section for Travel on Tuesday.

Herald editor Tim Murphy says the Weekend Herald's award is particularly special result for the team.

“The entry highlights the race relations series called What's Eating Pakeha, our biggest editorial project in years which involved a huge team of reporters, writers, editors, designers and photographers.”

“It was a real journalistic challenge that only newspapers can really do justice to. The whole paper came together to produce a top-class result for the community.

"This same work led to the paper being a runner-up in Australia's Panpa awards for major papers across Australasia and south-east Asia.“

Of the Weekend Herald, the judges said the paper "pulled ahead in this very competitive field as a result of its powerful and confronting series on Race Relations in New Zealand.

“This series was handled with authority and balance and its presentation was compelling but restrained. What a worthy and ambitious undertaking and one that brought out the best that a very good newspaper has to offer."

The Herald on Sunday made an impressive debut at the Qantas Media Awards. Launched just last October, it was a finalist for best weekly newspaper - a great achievement in a short time, says editor Shayne Currie, particularly in such a competitive category.

Sports editor Paul Lewis won Best Sports Columnist, Amanda Spratt won Newspaper Junior Feature Writer, and the newspaper's Fashion and Beauty section won the Best Fashion Pages/Section Category.

Mr Currie says the launch of the Herald on Sunday has been hugely successful and the awards reinforce that.

"The awards eligibility period closed after the Herald on Sunday had been in the market for only three months so we are thrilled with such a strong result. Our staff have worked incredibly hard to make the paper a success and can feel justifiably proud."

The Qantas Media Awards recognise excellence in every discipline of print journalism. It is now in its 32nd year.

ends

NZ Herald winners at Qantas Media Awards 2004:

Reporters

Paul Panckhurst Business, Finance & Consumer Affairs

Julie Middleton Food & Nutrition

Stephen Cook General

Fran O’Sullivan Government, Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs

Peter Griffin Information & Communiations Technology

Ruth Berry Maori Issues

Simon Collins Science & Technology

Angela Gregory Pacific Islands Issues

Newspaper feature writers

Jon Stokes Maori Issues

Angela Gregory Pacific Islands Issues

Suzanne McFadden Sport and Racing

Tim Watkin The Arts

Eleanor Black Tourism and Travel

Columnists

Andrew Lumsden Humour

Chris Barton Information & Communications Technology

Tapu Misa Pacific Islands Issues

Jim Eagles Tourism and Travel

Cartoonist

Rod Emmerson

Photography

Brett Phibbs Best Senior portfolio

Brett Phibbs Best Single Feature Picture

Best Newspaper Heading

Arthur Whelan

Best Newspaper Specialist Page or Section

Supersport Sport and Racing

Travel Tourism and Travel

Best Weekly Newspaper

The Weekend Herald

Herald on Sunday winners at Qantas Media Awards 2004:

Newspaper feature writers

Amanda Spratt Junior Feature Writer

Columnists

Paul Lewis Sport and Racing

Best Newspaper Specialist Page or Section

Fashion and Beauty

About APN New Zealand

APN News & Media is a successful broad-based media company that publishes New Zealand's leading metropolitan daily newspaper, The New Zealand Herald as well as the Herald on Sunday. Launched in October 2004, the Herald on Sunday is a compact format quality newspaper with a North Island readership.

In addition to the New Zealand Herald and the Herald on Sunday, APN publishes five daily newspapers outside Auckland: Bay of Plenty Times, Hawkes Bay Today, Rotorua Daily Post, Wairarapa Times-Age, Wanganui Chronicle, Whangarei Northern Advocate. It also publishes the consumer magazine The Aucklander and the community newspaper the Christchurch Star.

A division of APN National Publishing, NZ Magazines owns three magazine titles; The New Zealand Listener, The Women’s Weekly and Crème Magazine.

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