IRN news awards get bigger for 2012

Entries will open this week for next year’s commercial radio news awards, which have been expanded this year to include new categories.

The date for the IRN Awards has been set as Tuesday 27 March 2012, with new prizes to be handed out for best ‘And Finally’ story and best sports story.

The News team of the Year category will also become two separate awards – one for stations with a TSA under 750,000 and one for stations with a TSA over 750,000.

Entries open this Wednesday (16 November) and close on Friday 16 December.

A spokesman for the awards told RadioToday.co.uk: “This year commercial radio news has had an enormous role to play in bringing some major stories to listeners and has continued to build trust and engagement in a way that newspapers appear to be failing to achieve. For example, whilst radio steered a steady course through the Joanna Yeates murder story, newspaper coverage resulted in eight separate compensation awards to the wrongly accused suspect Chris Jefferies and this was followed by two contempt of court judgments. Similarly the phone hacking scandal culminated in the shock closure of the News of the World, following the admission they had hacked into the phone of Milly Dowler. All of which provides radio with a huge opportunity to cement further the greater trust it has with its audience and in particular to boost its already strong reputation for timely, relevant and reliable news reports.”

At the 2011 event, Global Radio picked up two of the five prizes with the remaining ones taken one each by Bauer, GMG and Isle of Wight Radio.

The full list of categories for the IRN Awards 2012 is as follows:

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blockquote>News team of the year >750,000 TSA
News team of the year <750,000 TSA
Best original news story
Best sports story
Newcomer of the year
Reporter of the year
Newsreader of the year
The ‘And Finally’ Award

Stations can see the full entry requirements for the 2012 IRN Awards and download entry forms from the IRN Awards website.