The Peninsula has won a prestigious Middle East Digital Media Award for its website from World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).
Cementing its place in Qatar’s digital landscape and news media, www.thepeninsulaqatar.com was picked as the third Best News Website in the Middle East by WAN-IFRA. The Peninsula is the only paper from Qatar to make it to the winners list.
WAN-IFRA's Digital Media Awards are the most prestigious recognition of best practice innovation in digital publishing worldwide. Now in their second year in the Middle East, the awards are presented in several regions around the world during the year.
The Peninsula website covers a whole spectrum of news and features from around the world. The website has sections covering business, sports, various lifestyle topics and entertainment.
The website also uses digital elements like videos and graphics in innovative ways, which enhances the reading experience of our users.
The Peninsula also has a very strong presence on the social media and all the social media platforms are well integrated with the website giving the users an immersive experience.
Selecting The Peninsula for the award the judges said: "The website covers the entire spectrum of news from local reports, sports, lifestyle, technology, entertainment and economy. The Peninsula offers a great platform for the advertisers as it attracts regular and captive readers who are well-read and in decision making positions."
For Best News Website category the judges look into content quality, consistency in user experience and evidence of the publishing company’s commitment to running the service and offering value to readers and advertisers. Innovative design, the use of multimedia (such as audio, video, infographics, photography, etc) to better tell the story, ease of navigation, speed of downloads and the site’s overall organisation are also taken into consideration.
Khaleej Times from UAE and Times of Oman from Oman took the first and second spots respectively.
A sister concern of the The Peninsula, Al Sharq Newspaper Mobile Application (Augmented Reality), won the top prize in Best News Mobile Service category. The mobile app of Al Sharq newspaper implemented Augmented Reality (AR) feature for Al Sharq newspaper, so readers can view moving content such as a video or an animation on a page of their newspaper.
All regional winners are subsequently entered into competition for our annual World Digital Media Awards, which are presented each autumn during WAN-IFRA's Expo, which this year takes place from 10-12 October in Berlin.
In total, more than 300 industry delegates attended the two-day Middle East Conference, co-organised this year by Dubai Production City and took place at the InterContinental Hotel in Dubai Festival City. The awards were presented during a dinner ceremony at the Mawal-Al Murooj Rotana in Dubai.
