The Stray Ferret has been shortlisted for Website of the Year in the Society of Editors’ 2020 Regional Press Awards.
The digital news service for the Harrogate district is one of seven websites in contention for the award.
The awards are widely regarded as the newspaper industry’s most prestigious. The winner will be revealed on September 16.
The Stray Ferret launched online at the onset of the covid pandemic in March last year and now has built a loyal audience with around 700,000 page views a month.
Our investigations have included, amongst others, the total cost of Harrogate Borough Council’s new offices, exposing a culture of secrecy at the authority, the shoddy work of a local “builder” and exposing how a Harrogate hotelier held an illegal New Year’s Eve party during lockdown.
Read more:
- True cost of civic centre was £17m
- Women ripped off by ‘shoddy’ Harrogate builder
- Claims well-known Harrogate hotelier held illegal New Year’s Eve party
- Investigation: Shocking number of council papers withheld from public
Tamsin O’Brien, editor of the Stray Ferret, said:
“I am immensely proud that the Stray Ferret has been shortlisted for such a prestigious journalism award. We have worked very hard since we launched 18 months ago to bring quality local news to the people of the Harrogate district.
“We have done our absolute best to cover the issues that people care about whether that be new housing developments to political devolution and, of course, the impact of covid which has dominated the news agenda since we started.
“Since we launched we have broken many news stories. The Stray Ferret exists for local people as the place to go for local information and as a platform for debate – it’s fantastic that our work has been recognised by the wider news industry.”
