News.com wins third newspaper award

ATLANTA--CNET News.com won a top honor in the online journalism awards sponsored by newspaper industry publication Editor & Publisher last night, taking a first-place prize for the third year in a row.

News.com's trophy was "an unprecedented third straight EPpy Award in the category of Best Non-Newspaper Online News Service," according to a story posted to the Editor & Publisher site. The other two finalists in the category were MSNBC and Wired News.

Washingtonpost.com dominated the competition among newspaper sites, winning four of the 18 categories in the contest. The awards, presented at an industry conference that drew more than 1,300 attendees here, were selected by an international panel of 30 judges who received nearly 400 entries.

"We believe this is the strongest group of finalists in the history of the EPpy Awards," D. Colin Phillips, publisher of the Editor & Publisher Company of New York, said in an earlier statement. "The improvement in the quality of the entries each year is a testament to the newspaper industry's focus on the Internet."

The award was the latest of many to recognize News.com since the site was launched in 1996. Last year, in addition to its second Editor & Publisher honor, the site won the first Webby Award given for best news site, a first-place trophy at the international Milia d'Or Awards in Cannes, France, and all four categories entered in the Annual Computer Press Awards.