Durham Region Media Group has strong showing at North American website awards
May 15, 2008 - 03:24
DURHAM -- The Metroland Durham Region Media has entered new territory with its websites and online publishing efforts.
The Suburban Newspapers of America announced the winners of its local community website contest and www.durhamregion.com and www.mediamash.ca took home seven awards.
Stefanie Swinson earned accolades for her work on the Junior Webcaster feature with students from Durham Region schools. The webcaster won best local community initiative in its category and best overall collaborative project.
The judges said "creating a Junior Webcaster program monthly is a unique way to get area children involved in the media. It also creates an opportunity for advertising around the program. The production quality of the video was good and the community response increased page views and unique users to the site. Overall, the project has an emphasis on the community and combines youth with the media cohesively."
Our website www.mediamash.ca was chosen best multi-media initiative in its category by the judges for offering multi-media news on demand for its users. The judges also said the site offers a place for users to share their own videos and photos. Whether the site is covering a tragedy, weather, community issues or charity events, the multi-media features in the site bring the user closer to the story. Community response to the use of video has been high and community response to posting their own content has also been high, with 199 posts since June 2007.
The other first-place prize was for best community service project for our Vimy Ridge special report. "Multi-media features are used throughout the Vimy rededication series. slideshows, video, blogs, ample stories and more invite users to see what students in the community were determined to do. This feature generated an 800 per cent increase in photo gallery views and a significant increase in page views overall," the judges said.
Our newest online venture, www.flyerland.ca, earned a third-place finish in the best niche site or product. The judges commented that www.flyerland.ca attracts users to the site by a variety of deals and coupons. This incentive alone allows advertisers a unique opportunity on the site. The site offers a clean, easy-to-use design. The site plays host to various area businesses in the Ontario area.
We also earned an honourable mention in this category for mobile.newsdurhamregion.com. The judges were impressed we created a mobile product to give community members a better opportunity to stay in touch with news and events. The site is a mobile version of newsdurhamregion.com, but also offers movie show times, weather conditions and long-range forecasts.
The honours for innovation on our website didn't stop there as Online Content Manager Ian Caldwell and developer Chris Creamer earned an honourable mention in the local website innovator of the year category for creating the election night news alerts. On the creation of the custom web-based entry control panel, the judges said, "They did this smoothly in a very short period of time. The program is still being used to provide real-time updates for their site and for others within their company. The application is very easy to use. The application moves the site in a new direction with better updating capabilities and is a notable innovation for the industry."
The panel of judges included new media consultants and other leaders in the newspaper online publishing world. The winners are being recognized at a conference in Las Vegas this week.
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