The Irish Farmers Journal took home the Digital Excellence award at the 2018 Newsbrands Ireland Journalism Awards held in the Mansion House, Dublin today (15 November). These annual awards celebrate quality original journalism which is an integral part of Irish society.

In the digital excellence category, the Irish Farmers Journal competed against strong entries from The Irish Times, The Irish Sun and The Times, Ireland Edition.

In awarding the Irish Farmers Journal the Digital Excellence award, the judges noted the significant achievement by the news, technical and digital teams who together generated the most innovative, effective, user-friendly and informative online content of all national news brands.

This content was communicated to our target audience through innovative design and the significant use of multimedia platforms to bring the content to life – videos, podcasts, infographics, social media, photography and much more.

Digital

In accepting this award on behalf of the Irish Farmers Journal, editor and CEO Justin McCarthy said: “The success of the Irish Farmers Journal over the past 70 years has been underpinned by a sharp focus on generating trusted and unique content that is of value to our audience.

"The rapid growth in our digital subscriber base demonstrates that farmers are increasingly digitally savvy and understand the business benefits from investing in high-value specialist content.

"This award recognises the significant investment that we continue to make in people and technology to ensure that we have the best possible specialist team and platforms to showcase our original, unique content, in a way that is both informative and engaging.

"The fact that the Irish Farmers Journal is owned by a trust allows us to reinvest profits back into the business to meet the trust’s objective of enhancing the competitiveness of Irish farming and the well-being of those engaged in the sector.

"Our digital strategy is designed to complement and enhance our print offering by providing 50% extra content online for our readers in the form of specialist articles, knowledge hub tools and calculators, video, audio and interactive graphics and tables.

"All of this content is available for our print readers to consume for free by using our innovative unique loyalty code printed in the print edition every week.

"Thank you to all our readers for supporting us in such large numbers on all platforms.”

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