Lanka Tribune bags prestigious UK Media award

A top Sri Lankan newspaper in Europe-Lanka Tribune has won the much-coveted Media Organisation of the Year Award at the Inaugural UKLanka Times Community Excellence Awards held recently.

Rasantha Cooray, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Lanka Tribune, received the award at the Award Ceremony held at Holiday Inn Brentford Lock in London. Only eight months in existence, the newspaper has received accolades from several high-profile personalities from Prime Minister Gordon Brown to former Prime Minister Tony Blair and even celebrities like Kate Moss, the newspaper said.

Lanka Tribune emerged the best newspaper, beating three other newspapers in the final round namely, Silvarrow, Newslanka and Lanka Viththie which had been in the publishing arena for 29, 16 and 10 years, respectively. The newspaper distributed in United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and France, targets a vital market segment - the Sri Lankan diaspora in Europe, as well as Europeans interested in the island. In terms of coverage, the Lanka Tribune currently has a readership of around 32,000 of mainly high-end business oriented readers.

“The reason behind this award is that we have our own dedicated team of journalists both here and in Sri Lanka, who do all the interviews, write-ups and coverages. Furthermore the mere fact that other newspapers are advertising with us shows that Lanka Tribune itself is a benchmark.” Editor Cooray said.

“Due to the overwhelming response we received, the number of copies printed, were increased from 6,000 to 8,000 and we hope to increase it to 12,000 within the coming months, taking the readership of each issue to over 48,000,” he said.