SALT LAKE CITY — Deseret News Sports was nationally recognized as the winner of a 2013 EPPY Award.
Deseret News Sports beat out kusports.com and msgvarsity.com to claim the 2013 award for "Best Sports Website with less than 1 million unique monthly visitors."
"I’m very proud of the web sports team, proud of the terrific journalists and contributors with whom I have the privilege to work, and proud of the tireless effort that goes into making every detail correct every night," said Landon Hemsley, sports web producer for Deseret News. "It’s a team effort all around, and no one person can take more credit than another."
According to Editor and Publisher, winners of an EPPY Award are selected from "an international list of nominations to honor the best media-affiliated websites across 30 categories, in addition to categories for excellence in college and university journalism."
Each category is divided into two subcategories: websites with more than 1 million monthly unique visitors and websites with less than 1 million monthly unique visitors. Winning the 2013 EPPY Award for "Best Sports Website with more than 1 million unique monthly visitors" was espn.com.
Hemsley believes that Deseret News Sports was able to secure the win due to a few different reasons, one of which was high school sports coverage.
"Deseret News Sports is known for its outstanding high school coverage," he said. "I believe our high school sports database is what makes Deseret News Sports viable as a product in itself. ... I also think sports fans in Utah are increasingly starting to rely on deseretnews.com for BYU, Utes and Jazz news, which always will be core to our brand."
In 2012 Deseret News was a finalist for this particular EPPY award, along with the Lawrence Journal-World, MSG Varsity, Naples Daily News, The Salt Lake Tribune and Wired. Msgvarsity.com took the award in 2012, but Hemsley is optimistic Deseret News is headed in the right direction to secure the 2014 EPPY Award.
"We intend to continue to improve at the things we already do well: high school sports, BYU, the University of Utah and the Utah Jazz coverage," Hemsley said. "I encourage our readers to stick with us. We’re only going to get better."
Email: crenouard@deseretnews.com