Judges praised its news
content, local links and the what’s on section at the ceremony in
Birmingham.
CWN started as a small
community site six years ago, and has grown to attracting 120,000
readers a month.
Many people visit the site
regularly to look at the daily news and web cam overlooking Broadgate,
but thousands more use it as an archive site.
With more than 20,000 pages of
news and information about Coventry and Warwickshire, it offers the
biggest on-line resource in the area.
CWN made it through to the
final three despite just having one reporter, and editor Chris Studman,
who collected the award.
He said:
“To win this award is a
fantastic achievement for such a small company. We were up against
large newspapers with huge resources and we didn’t expect to get
this far at all.
“It shows what can be
achieved on the web even with limited resources.
“CWN is establishing
itself as a highly credible and reliable news source for the city
and the county.
“I’d like to thank all
the staff who have worked on the site over the past few years to get
us where we are today.
“We are obviously indebted
to all the people around the area who tell us what’s going on.
“And most importantly are
our readers, from Coventry to Canada, who visit us time and again
and tell us how much they are enjoying the site.”
The winner of the category was
the Wolverhampton Express & Star’s www.westmidlands.com
with www.shropshirestar.co.uk
also being highly commended.
No other Coventry media were
represented at the awards, although former Evening Telegraph chief
feature writer Paul Dale was highly commended in the Business
Journalist category, and former health reporter and feature writer
Alison Handley collected the Sutton on Sunday’s highly commended
award in the weekly newspaper of the year category.
