Birmingham Mail triumphs at Awards
Congratulations go to two Midland newspapers and a sports writer from the Express & Star who were amongst the big winners at the annual Regional Press Awards, held in London
It was a double success for the Birmingham Mail/Birmingham Live, which won the Reporting Communities Award and the Digital Initiative of the Year Award. Heralding the paper’s “Brummie Muslims” coverage, the judges said: “It’s not often that publications concentrate their coverage on ethnic minority populations in a way that isn’t patronising or clichéd,” but that is precisely what BirminghamLive has done with its Brummie Muslims brand.”
Against a difficult background for Asian communities, BirminghamLive implemented a series of editorial innovations – including using live blogging, social video and photo galleries – to help engage with, rather than talk at, the 341,000 Muslims in Birmingham. Its coverage of Eid and Ramadan resulted in 2.2 million page views across the holy month, while a mini-series heading out to diverse areas of Birmingham attracted 50,000 page views. A newly launched WhatsApp community grew to 850 members in just three months.
“By using targeted techniques, social strategies and actively seeking positive work by the Muslim community, the Brummie Muslims brand was strongly identified and celebrated,” judges said. Overall, it was “a superb campaign, expertly and sensitively managed”.
Commenting on the Digital Initiative of the Year submission, the judges said BirminghamLive’s Child Poverty Emergency campaign centred around a wide-ranging report, created alongside Reach’s Data Unit, and ran to more than 12,000 words. The team quickly recognised that they needed to use a host of different technologies to communicate the important findings to audiences.
They used animated graphs, illustrations and photographs in a “scrollytelling” format, allowing the reader to become immersed in the information, while a custom chatbot was developed using Reach’s in-house AI, Mantis, which allows users to ask questions about the report without needing to scroll through it in its entirety. A bespoke widget was also developed to generate letters to local MPs, connecting postcodes with MP contact details. By combining this with a letter template, at least 1,100 people immediately got in touch with their MP from both mobile and desktop platforms.
The judges, who also highly commended Birmingham Mail/Birmingham Live in the News Brand of the Year (Large) category, said the campaign was a “comprehensive piece of work and a strong digital initiative.” “The use of AI tools shows innovation, while the digital reporting is a great example of how to communicate complex issues in an engaging and thoughtful way.”
Meanwhile the Derbyshire Live/Derby Telegraph’s “Save Our Rail Industry” initiative won the Campaign of the Year Award. When it was announced that the 200-year old, Derby-based train manufacturer Alstom was to cease production in the city, the Derbyshire Live website and Derby Telegraph began working with other concerned organisations to save the company and the thousands of people it employs. The resulting ‘Save our rail industry’ campaign was, according to judges, a welcome reminder of how local media brands can play a crucial role in bringing all elements of the community together.
Agenda editor Zena Hawley, a former winner of Scoop of the Year and Journalist of the Year at the Press Club-organised Midlands Media Awards, was commended for working with the then Derby City Council leader and Alstom management to ensure the messages reached even higher levels. Support was also garnered from then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer, who both visited the Alstom site. The publicity prompted an emergency debate in Parliament involving ministers and local MPs and eventually, the government announced a new £370m contract to Alstom.
Nathan Judah, described as a “trailblazer in digital coverage” journalist for the Express & Star, leading the push for video content and directly driving subscriptions from sports fans since the introduction of a paywall in 2024, was honoured as Sports Journalist of the Year. He is well-known for his coverage of Wolverhampton Wanderers and co-hosts the weekly ‘Wolves poddy’ podcast, which regularly surpasses 15,000 listens a week. When accompanying Wolves on their pre-season tour, his daily tour diaries, videos, feature interviews, matchday coverage and podcasts helped more than double overall subscriptions for the paper.
Judges praised his bravery, for “not being afraid to report on the issues of the day,” and said he was a “stand-out” winner for a “fantastic breadth of reporting… his work…should be held aloft as one of the finest examples in regional news.”
Caption: Birmingham Mail editor Graeme Brown (second left) with his award-winning team and ITV presenter Sameena Ali-Khan (right)
