Fairfax Media Scoops 30 Wins at Canon Media Awards

Fairfax Media has won half the titles on offer at the country’s premier awards for journalism excellence.

Fifty-nine awards presented at the Canon Media Awards acknowledged brilliance in editorial journalism, design, photography, artwork and cartooning across magazines, newspapers and websites.

Among Fairfax Media’s 30 awards was The Southland Times’ win of the Newspaper of the Year (up to 30,000 circulation) title. The Dominion Post won an impressive ten awards and the Sunday Star-Times won six titles. The Press’ four awards included Best Columnist and Best Design.

Stuff.co.nz received the accolade of Best News Site for the second year in a row and also received the award for Best Use of Emerging Technologies for its ipad and iphone app. Group digital editor Sinead Boucher was awarded the top individual prize, the Wolfson Scholarship. The Sunday Star-Times’ Tony Wall was named senior feature writer of the year. Phil Kitchin, of the Dominion Post, was named reporter of the year.

Of the magazines brands, Unlimited won the Best Trade or Professional Magazine.

Fairfax Media CEO Allen Williams says it is encouraging to see the company’s keen investment into strategy and development being rewarded with 30 wins.

“A great number of Fairfax’s key media brands were recognised for their market leading work – but so too were many of our highly talented journalists, photographers, videographers and cartoonists. I congratulate them all,” says Williams.

“The awards vindicate the investment Fairfax Media is making in our ‘content first, channel second’ approach to our journalism coverage – a project which is reaching the end of its first year in effect. Our updating of technology and systems has resulted in the growth and enhancement of Fairfax Media’s news gathering and reporting – and enabled us to file this content 24 hours a day to keep ahead of the competition.”

Content First means that the news gathered by Fairfax’s 750+ journalists can be utilised across Fairfax’s multi-platform brands. This cross‐channel integration is unique to Fairfax Media, and is really only achieved due to the strength of its journalists giving a breadth and depth of quality content to reach 85.2% of New Zealanders.

Another integral part of the Content First programme is the up-coming launch of Fairfax’s own newswire service. This will capitalise on Fairfax’s vast investment in journalists right throughout the depth and breadth of the country, and will offer quality content syndication to the market.

A full list of Fairfax winners from the 2011 Canon Media Awards follows:

There were a record 1314 entries into the Canon Media Awards from around the country. Fairfax Media had 86 finalists and gained 30 award wins.

The awards event, formerly known as the Qantas Media Awards, was held at the Sky City Convention Centre in Auckland on Friday 27 May.