Suburban Newspapers of America names LJWorld.com top local news website; Journal-World takes third place in Newspaper of the Year contest

LJWorld.com was named the top local news website Friday by Suburban Newspapers of America for daily newspapers with less than 40,000 daily circulation. Websites were judged on treatment of breaking news, breadth and depth of content and amount and timeliness of updating information.

The Lawrence Journal-World also finished third in SNA’s 2011 Newspaper of the Year contest. The Galveston, Texas, Daily News finished first and The Post Star of Glens Falls, N.Y., was second in the Newspaper of the Year judging.

Here’s what the judges said about the Journal-World: “Great use of graphics and photos; clean and engaging front-page layouts. I found ads pretty non-invasive and thought their placement along the bottom and right sides of each page worked well. The bin Laden front page really impressed me.”

The Journal-World was named SNA’s Newspaper of the Year in its circulation category (30,000 or less) in 2010, 2009, 2007 and 2005, and placed second in 2006.

SNA is composed of more than 2,000 newspapers across North America.