This year the best designed newspapers in Europe come from Sweden, Germany, Portugal and Croatia. A total of 241 newspapers from 27 countries participated in the 11th European Newspaper Award (ninth competition 288 participants, tenth 236).

The main prize winners
Due to the great differences in local newspapers, regional newspapers, national newspapers and weeklies, the main prizes are awarded in four categories. The following received awards at the 11th European Newspaper Award for best design and concept:

• European Newspaper of the Year, Category local newspaper, Smålandsposten, Växjö, Schweden
• European Newspaper of the Year, Category regioanl newspaper, Stuttgarter Zeitung, Deutschland
• European Newspaper of the Year, Category nationwide newspaper, I informação, Oeiras, Portugal
• Judges’ Special Recognition, 24sata, Zagreb, Croatia

The European Newspaper Award intends to foster the exchange of information about the conception and design of newspapers throughout Europe.

The decision of the jury
The decision of the jury reflected a trend as in the last few years towards the handy format: Three of the winners are in tabloid format, one in Rhenish format. The winning newspapers this year are quite different: “I informação”, the new national newspaper from Portugal, banks wholly on innovation with regard to content, design and online appearance, Stuttgarter Zeitung, on the other hand, being configured in such a manner that one wants to simply settle back and read it.

Newspapers are discovering the visual even more strongly: There are more submissions in the categories photography, photo report, illustrations and infographics than in earlier years. In many countries, the pure news pages are, in the meantime, markedly affected visually and less text-laden than earlier.  This is why the jury decided to introduce a new category – “Visual Storytelling”.

Here, the award recipients include Bild am Sonntag, Germany, and Bergens Tidende, Norway. The economic situation has not played a visible role in the European Newspaper Award up till now: All in all, there are more submissions than in earlier years. The European newspaper branch exhibits the diversity of creative ideas.

The members of the jury
This year, the 14 members of the international jury came from nine countries: Spain, Norway, Sweden, Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and Germany. The jury is made up of journalists, scientists and designers. There were two jury sessions, when a number of categories were assessed each time.

Jury conference in Neuss:

• Prof. Joachim Blum, Media Consultant, Germany
• Haika Hinze, Art-Direktorin, “Die Zeit”, Germany
• Michael Adams, Regional Director Society for Newsdesign, Switzerland
• Martin Huisman, “De Morgen”, Belgium
• Xymena Weiß-Gendera, Editorial-Design, Düsseldorf, Germany
• Walter Jensen, “Bergens Tidende”, Norway

Jury conference in Berlin:

• Javier Errea, University Pamplona, Spain,
• Anna Thurfjell, “Svenska Dagbladet”, Sweden
• Annette Milz, editor-in-chief “Medium Magazin”, Germany,
• Theo Dersjant, Director Fontys School of Journalism, the Netherlands
• Gerhard Treffkorn, Art-Director, “Kleine Zeitung”, Graz, Austria
• Klaus Steiner, Director of KLARA School of Journalism, Berlin, Germany
• Eberhard Wolf, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany
• Valentina Villegas, Athens Plus, Greece

Members of the jury are not allowed to assess their own newspaper.

This competition is organised by the newspaper designer Norbert Küpper from Meerbusch. He co-operates with the journalist newspapers “Medium Magazin”, Frankfurt, “Der Österreichische Journalist”, Salzburg and “Schweizer Journalist”, Wilen b. Wil.

Alongside these main prizes, outstanding work in various categories, e.g. front pages, inside pages, Information graphics, typography, photography, photo stories, inserts, special pages, were presented with “Awards of Excellence”. Germany: 35 newspapers, Austria: 9, Switzerland 7. At the eleventh competition, a total of xx Awards of Excellence went to 107 newspapers from 21 countries. The year book provides an outline of the best European newspaper concepts, showing all the winners´ pages. It will appear as CD-Rom in the spring of 2010.

The complete list of winners will be filed on the Internet under www.newspaperaward.org as of 15th November at 23.59 hours. There, too, the award logo and the cover pages of the winners will be able to be downloaded. The results of all European Newspaper Awards hitherto are documented here.

Contact:
Norbert Küpper
Office for Newspaper Design
Gutenbergstr. 4
40670 Meerbusch
Germany

+49/(0)2159 911615
nkuepper@zeitungsdesign.de
www.newspaperaward.org