Stan Ellis, James Wheeler, Oskar Alley, Alanah Eriksen and Stuart Dye celebrate the Herald’s wins at the Voyager Media Awards.
It’s a three-peat!
The NZ Herald has reigned supreme at the annual Voyager Media Awards, winning the two marquee digital awards – Website of the Year and News App of the Year – as well as a slew of team and individual winners.
It is the third straight year that the Herald website and app have won the acclaimed “digital double” at New Zealand journalism’s biggest night of the year.
Judges in the categories praised the Herald’s “breadth of content and depth of writing”, saying readers were spoiled for choice. The app’s usability and display were also “first rate”.
“This is a site with access to premium resources and knows how to use them to maximum impact. Special series like Inflation Nation and respected columnists really set them apart.”
The celebrations didn’t stop there for the Herald and NZME – the Weekend Herald was named Weekly Newspaper of the Year and Canvas magazine was judged best newspaper magazine, at a black-tie event attended by more than 600 people at Auckland’s Cordis Hotel.
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The Herald’s 90% Project, which helped keep New Zealanders safe during the Covid pandemic, was judged joint winner of best editorial campaign. The project had already won global recognition at the annual INMA awards in June.
And NZME’s special series on dementia, The Brains Trust, was awarded Best Documentary.
Among the big individual NZ Herald winners were Hamish Fletcher, named Editorial Leader of the Year. “Hamish shows a deep level of caring for his team and their success, but also a real love of journalism and the impact it can have,” said the judges.
The Herald’s Simon Wilson was named Feature Writer of the Year (short-form) and Brett Phibbs was judged Photographer of the Year. Wilson also won the award for best first-person essay.
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NZME managing editor Shayne Currie praised the work of NZME’s journalists and the support of the digital and product teams.
“To win the two biggest digital awards for three years in a row is simply phenomenal,” said Currie. “Those three years have marked an extraordinary news period. To be judged best in New Zealand over that time is a tribute to the wonderful talent and dedication of our editorial teams – and the quality, trusted journalism they produce each day.”
Jamie Morton was named best science reporter, Jared Savage best crime reporter, Felix Desmarais of the Rotorua Daily Post was best local government reporter and Steve Braunias best arts and culture reporter. John Cowpland was adjudged best sports photographer.
The Herald also won the highly contested best data journalism category, recognising the work of Chris McDowall and Keith Ng.
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NZME CEO Michael Boggs congratulated all finalists and winners. He said the double win for NZME in the two highly contested digital categories demonstrated the strength of the company’s digital platforms.
“At NZME our teams have worked incredibly hard to diversify our platforms with a focus on digital, ensuring our trusted and quality content is available to as broad an audience as possible. Having recently reached 100,000 paid digital-only subscriptions in June, we know having a world-class digital offering is vital to ensuring the long-term future and sustainability of our newsrooms and our news platforms. To hear the judges praise the Herald app’s usability and display as ‘first rate’ was fantastic to hear,” he said.
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NZME-owned BusinessDesk – as well as being a finalist for Website of the Year – was also in the winner’s circle, with reporter Jem Traylen named best student journalist.
The Herald’s Matt Nippert, Tom Dillane, Kurt Bayer and Phibbs were runners-up in specialist reporting, writing and photography categories.
Other winners on the night included Christchurch’s The Press newspaper, which won the overall Newspaper of the Year award.
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