Paris, France and Darmstadt, Germany, 9 March 2010

Local content & local business for local markets

Newspapers at the Heart of Local Communities

Newspaper companies are seeing a surge in the number of people producing local content themselves, through blogs, social networks, video and other web tools. Many publishers see this as an opportunity to provide local content to their audiences and to target products and services from local businesses, thus strengthening their role at the heart of their local communities at the same time.

The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) will honour the newspapers that are creating the best local cross-media projects with the WAN-IFRA Cross Media Awards 2010. Now in its fourth year, the awards offer recognition to newspaper companies that have excelled in expanding their unique content and advertising across all publishing platforms.

Call for entries is now open for projects which are content-related, business-related or contain both elements. Details of the awards, sponsored by dpa infocom, can be found at http://www.wan-ifra.org/xma. The deadline for entries is 15 June 2010.

Though local markets differ in size, the challenge is the same for every news publisher: to be the number one resource for news, information and advertising opportunities in local markets. The WAN-IFRA Cross Media Awards is open to all projects, whether they serve a market of more than 1 million, fewer than 1,000, or anything in between.

The best 10 entries will be invited to attend the award ceremony, which will take place on 4 October 2010 at the IFRA Expo 2010 in Hamburg. For more information on the Expo, please visit http://www.ifraexpo.com.