In just its first year of operation, SunLive has taken first place honours at the New Zealand Community Newspaper Association awards. At a ceremony held at the Skyline restaurant in Queenstown on Saturday night, a SunLive delegation, led by Sun Media CEO Ross Brown and with journalists Andrew Campbell, Lyle McMahon and Edward Scragg, Sun Media was presented with the award for best website.


Andrew Campbell, Ross Brown, Edward Scragg and Lyle McMahon celebrate after winning the 2010 NZCNA 'best website' award in Queenstown.

It reflects the groundbreaking approach to broadcasting news adopted by the company in June 2009, when SunLive, a Bay of Plenty news service, began.
"Some online businesses don't put the resources into a professional news product, but this success is a reflection on the investment made by the directors in creating a 24/7 news service," says Ross.    
"It is a vision company directors Claire and Brian Rogers have held for a number of years and to have won in just its first year is a great effort."
That vision involves developing SunLive into a news hub for the Bay of Plenty.
"Besides delivering local daily news and stories we are taking a role in supplying multimedia for national media with news from the region."
The whole Sun Media team was unable to attend the awards evening, but their efforts are noticed.
"The company has invested in the resources to deliver a top quality product and this is not possible without a top news and sales team that delivers day in and day out in print and online media."
Ross says the business model and efforts made by Sun Media in creating an online daily news service in the Bay of Plenty are forward thinking.
"Such approaches taken by the team will be adopted by other news media in the future."
The creation of SunLive's innovative news platform was dependent on the support of Christchurch based web developers Id Digital Media.
"We are grateful for all the support of Id in building the news website and for their development of the cutting edge technology that makes SunLive possible."