Winners of a WAN-Ifra contest to recognise innovative newspaper concepts to attract young readers – including Indonesia’s ‘Jawa Pos’ and a predominance of other Asian publishers – will be honoured during the World Newspaper Congress in Vienna next month.

The 400,000 circulation ‘Pos’ was named World Young Reader Newspaper of the Year for 2011, also winning the top prize for enduring excellence. The award recognises a programme including a three-page daily youth section called ‘DetEksi’, published since 2000, combining this with a major off-page marketing and engagement strategy. ‘DetEksi’ organises an annual youth conference, Indonesia’s largest, bringing more than 5000 middle and high school students together to learn and compete in topics from journalism to sports to quiz bowl. Education programmes in schools include a student journalism competition, a regional basketball league and concerts.

Judges said ‘Jawa Pos’ had done an outstanding job with an enduring, substantial, successful commitment to engaging young people on and off the printed page. “Its daily three-page DetEksi effort is more than a standard newspaper youth section. It’s a complete strategy for finding, engaging, and retaining young readers. Most importantly, it has worked,” the jury said.

The 24 winners come from Brazil, Indonesia, India, Portugal, the Philippines and the USA. “Our jury of past prize winners and young readership development experts was particulary impressed with the range of great practice this year, from a deceptively simple literacy project to a very effective newspaper-based social network for young people interested in business,” says executive director of young readership development at WAN-Ifra Aralynn McMane.

The awards will be presented  on October 12 in Vienna during the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum. The competition is supported by newsprint maker Norske Skog as part of its partnership in the Newspapers in Education development project.  

Details of the winning projects can be found at http://tinyurl.com/aboutthewinners