”Online newspaper of year” one day, plain old ” The Australian ” the next. What could have happened? A crisis of confidence?

In fact the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association award for best online newspaper was not awarded to The Australian, whatever the paper’s web masthead may have claimed for the past few weeks.

It was in fact awarded to The Australian’s online IT section. This is slightly weird, but that’s PANPA’s prerogative. This is, after all the organisation that named The Age as newspaper of the year remember.

 

PANPA was not impressed that The Australian had attempted to pass its entire online operation off as an award winner.

”The award was actually awarded to the IT component of the website,” a PANPA spokesman said this morning. They mistakenly made the banner indicate that the Australian website in general had won the award.

PANPA and The Australian have been in negotiation since the award was presented on August 8, a process that bore fruit overnight.

”It’s been an ongoing thing,” said our man at PANPA.