The Irish Times on the Web (www.irish-times.com) has won the major prize at the inaugural European interactive publishing awards, IP TOP, in Zurich. In winning the award for Best Content, The Irish Times on the Web finished ahead of 130 entries from 15 European countries.
The awards scheme, sponsored by Ringier, the largest publishing house in Switzerland, attracted entries from Europe's most prestigious newspaper and broadcasting websites and from organisations such as the Israeli parliament.
Aftonbladet the Stockholm evening newspaper website, which specialises in video and audio reports, came second, with the London Evening Standard's site, This is London, in third place.
The other finalists in the section were the BBC, the Financial Times, VGnett (Norway), Noticias (Spain), Russia today (Czech Republic) and Nettavissen (Norway).
Among the newspapers which entered the competition were: Liberation (France), Le Monde Diplomatique (France), Frankfurter Rundschau (Germany), the International Herald Tribune, the Jerusalem Post (Israel), El Pais (Spain) and Milliyet (Turkey).
In its citation the jury, composed of 22 experts in interactive publishing from 17 European countries and the United States, announced that "in the end, The Irish Times's combination of strong journalism and deep community elements triumphed over Aftonbladet's extraordinarily popular newspaper site."
The award was accepted on behalf of The Irish Times on the Web by senior journalist Mr William Hederman, whose special section, Dyoublong, on the writer James Joyce, was singled out for special mention by the jury.
In September the Irish Times site won the Information Excellence section at the Golden Spider Irish Internet Awards.
Details of the European awards are available on the Web at www.interactivepublishing.net