For the second year running the Fiordland Advocate has won two trophies at the prestigious Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association (PANPA) annual awards.
With more than 400 individual newspapers as its members, PANPA provides services such as conferences, awards, workshops and government lobbying and represents the interests of newspaper publishers in Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, South East Asia and North East Asia by promoting awareness and understanding of news publishing in all forms - print and digital - to the wider community.
More than 1000 entries were received for this year’s awards – making it the largest ever held by the association and one of the biggest newspaper competitions of its type in the world. The entries were assessed by a total of 71 judges from eight countries.
Seventeen of the awards presented at a gala dinner in Sydney last week went to New Zealand publishers – two of those the Fiordland Advocate. Four other projects entered by the Fiordland Advocate also made the finals.
The Advocate’s wins were both in the 0-10,000 circulation category. The fi rst was for a classified advertising campaign run last year in which all line ads were offered for free. The judges described this as “a brave thing to do for a small newspaper”. The second award was for cause-related marketing in recognition of the Advocate’s contribution to last year’s Daffodil Day appeal run by the Cancer Society. The judges said this demonstrated “great action in responding to the needs of the community and creating awarenes for the work of the Cancer Society. A good concept, well executed.”.
The Fiordland Advocate is an independent publication owned and operated by Kirsty Macnicol and David Pickett and servicing Fiordland, Central, Western and Northern Southland. It has been publishing for just over two-and-a-half years. In that time circulation has grown from 4500 to 10,000.