The Irish Times on the Web was honoured for the second consecutive year at the Golden Spider Irish Internet awards at the RDS in Dublin last night, winning the Compaq-sponsored Information Excellence award to add to the Best Commercial Website award it received at last year's inaugural ceremony.
The competition, organised by dot.ie magazine in association with PostGEM, was established to acknowledge excellence within the Irish Internet industry and reward innovation across the full spectrum of online activity.
The editor of the electronic editions of The Irish Times, Mr Seamus Martin, described the award as "a welcome recognition of a talented and enthusiastic staff which has produced the online newspaper over the past 12 months, including special sections devoted to the peace process, Bloomsday, St Patrick's Day, the presidential election and the Amsterdam Treaty". Other elements cited by Mr Martin included the Irish Ancestors section, An Teanga Bheo, the Irish-language site and the recently-revamped SportsExtra section.
Competition intensified this year, with entries up fourfold and over 2,000 online votes cast in the dot.ie Magazine Award category, which was won by Entertainment Ireland.
