The Irish Independent and The Limpopo Mirror newspaper in South Africa were jointly awarded the World Young Reader Prize by the World Association of Newspapers during a ceremony Monday in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
La Prensa of Panama received a Jury Commendation from the Paris-based WAN. Special Mention awards went to The Hindustan Times in India and to The Record of Hackensack, New Jersey in the United States.
WAN awards the World Young Reader Prize annually to the newspaper or newspapers that devise the most innovative projects to develop young readership. This year's awards were supported by the Norwegian paper producer Norske Skog and were presented during the 6th World Young Reader Conference (summaries of all conference presentations at
http://www.wan-press.org/article8083.html ).
Both the Irish Independent and the Limpopo Mirror won for science projects, but the newspapers could not be more different. The Independent has a daily circulation of 177,000, while the Limpopo Mirror is a weekly with a circulation of 8,000.
The Independent's science project, Eureka, is for primary school students in the 8- to 12-year age group. It was published 20 times during the school year, circulated with the newspaper to 720 primary schools, and provided a substantial net increase in circulation for the Independent on the Wednesdays that it was published -- over 22,000 additional copies on those days.
Though a small weekly, the Limpopo Mirror extended the reach of its "Science of Life" supplements by putting them on its web site and offering them without cost, to everyone, anywhere in the world. The supplements were designed to improve literacy and numerical skills for grades 1 through 3, but were used through grade 7 by students for whom English was not their first language, and for whom extra education material is difficult to obtain.
The materials can be found at http://www.zoutnet.co.za/sol/ .
For more about the winners and the WAN Young Reader Award, consult
http://www.wan-press.org/nie/wyrp.php
