The Times and its journalists won three major prizes at the What The Papers Say awards today, where it was named newspaper of the year.
Individual honours went to Richard Lloyd-Parry, Asia Editor, who was named foreign correspondent of the year, and Peter Brookes, who was named cartoonist of the year. Martin Samuel, a Times columnist, was named sports writer of the year for his articles in the News of the World.
The Times first went public with a compact or tabloid format in late 2003, following in the footsteps of The Independent, and finally broke with its 220-year broadsheet tradition to go compact six days a week on November 1, 2004.
Since the change of format it has made the strongest circulation gains of any national newspaper, in a generally declining and highly competitive market. The Times is currently selling 691,283 copies compared with 682,109 a year ago and 622,102 the year before that.
The What The Papers Say judges praised The Times for "recovering from a weak re-launch to become a very confident paper which was now very strong across a range of categories - journalists, feature writers, stories and scoops." They felt that it "stands out as a dynamic paper and has proved that size is not the most important thing good stories are."
Robert Thomson, Editor of The Times, said today: "These awards are a tribute to the unheralded souls who invest in journalism and to all the journalists at The Times.
"We have a new-fangled format with old-fashioned journalism."
Lloyd Parry's award recognised a wide-ranging portfolio including news and feature reports from the Indonesian province of Aceh after the Indian Ocean tsunami and an "incredibly moving" feature for the Times Magazine on three men who survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs 60 years ago.
Brookes was praised for his "brilliant draughtsmanship and his eye for detail which combine with an incisive eye for the story".
Among other prizes, The Guardian’s Dan Chung was named photographer of the year and David Jones of the Daily Mail reporter of the year. The Daily Telegraph picked up feature writer of the year for Jan Moir and columnist of the year for Boris Johnson.
Scoop of the year went to the Daily Mirror for its front page story picturing the supermodel Kate Moss snorting cocaine.
Alan Rusbridger of The Guardian won the judges' award for editor of the year. His predecessor, Peter Preston, was given the Lifetime Achievement Award.
