Grainews.ca wins gold

I am thrilled to announce that our website, www.grainews.ca, won gold at the Canadian Farm Writers' Federation annual awards banquet October 4. We won in the "world wide website" category.

I expect continued growth in the importance of online media, and I believe Grainews and most other successful farm papers will have to increase their online presence. Winning this award tells me that Grainews is on the right track. Sure, we have a long way to go in making full use of the web. We could have more original audio recordings — podcasts. We could also do more videos to demonstrate "how to" do something, such as set your combine for more efficient threshing. 

And as a business, Grainews needs to figure out how to get subscribers to pay for our online version or how to get advertisers to pay more for online spots. While I believe web media will only get stronger, it can't be a loss leader for us. Websites can take a lot of work to keep fresh, and we can't do that work for free. These are exciting times in the publishing business as we balance our efforts between "print" and "digital" worlds.

Other winners

It was a good year for my colleagues at Farm Business Communications, particularly Country Guide and the Manitoba Co-operator. The CFWF 2008 awards press relase.pdf lists the winners for all other categories. I'd like to give a special thank you to Dave Bedard, who arranges the daily news reports on grainews.ca. Dave also won silver in the press editorial category for an editorial in the Manitoba Co-operator.