Newslaundry app wins Best Innovative Digital Product at WAN-IFRA Digital Media Awards Worldwide

There are days when you’re beaming with joy, pride and immense gratitude. Today is one such day. 

The Newslaundry app won the Best Innovative Digital Product at the WAN-IFRA's prestigious annual Digital Media Awards Worldwide! Yes, worldwide, beating not only desi but also foreign counterparts. We won for a range of custom features that our app offers, including a podcast player, offline reading, and custom notifications. 

We had earlier won the South Asia award. This one is in the worldwide category competing with products from across the globe, triumphing over two finalists from Panama and Norway. We’re told we are among a handful of Indian news outlets ever to have gotten this global award. 

Congratulations to all our subscribers! A decade ago, who would have believed that readers could not only power public-interest journalism but also help drive innovation in news products? 

As most of you know, our app build was crowd-funded. More than 600 readers pitched in to help us fund the engineering and development costs. Not just that, you, our subscribers, helped us with critical beta testing and important feedback, and in prioritising features.  

The awards were handed out in Copenhagen on May 27 at the 75th World News Media Congress. When we heard about our win and that the awards ceremony was in Copenhagen, we made a decision. As much as we’d have loved to travel and collect the award in person, we thought it fitting to depute a subscriber instead. Because this award isn’t just ours – it’s yours too. It belongs to each and every one of you. 

Shout-out to Newslaundry subscriber Agneta Ghose, who lives in Denmark and went to Copenhagen to collect the award on Newslaundry’s behalf.

And here’s a video from the award ceremony. 

Products and tech mostly take a backseat in Indian newsrooms. They are primarily used to serve SEO or optimise for ad revenue, leaving no incentive for product innovation. At Newslaundry, our subscription model enables us to push the envelope and build products that serve our users and put their needs first.

I am so proud of our small team, probably the smallest among media organisations. My colleagues Rishabh, Danish, Aditya and Dhananjai have worked really hard and punched above their weight. Other than the team here, eight subscribers who are from tech helped us in the early stage of design – that’s classic Newslaundry. And a round of applause for past members of our team who helped us get here: Yatharth, Prachi, Nirjhar, Rishabh and Akshat.

For an ad-free, independent publisher like ours, you need to believe in what you’re building. We did. Our entire team did. This is our fifth product award, making us – allow me to brag – India’s most awarded digital news product team. We’d like to think we made a tiny, disruptive dent in the way news is consumed and accessed in India. We will continue to push for innovation in the Indian news space. Earlier this month, we launched a product overhaul that made our website and app accessible. 

Thank you. Thank you to all of you for putting your faith in us and championing independent media. Decades from now, when India’s media history is written, it will have a dedicated chapter on Newslaundry subscribers. 

This does not mean we’re resting on our laurels. We are working on a bunch of big things, including a common app for Newslaundry and The News Minute. Give us your feedback, suggestions, and bugs. We’re all ears. Write to chitranshutewari@newslaundry.com.

Download the Newslaundry app if you still haven’t. Some of the highest product awards vouch for it now.