Award for Lanka Tribune in UK

THE Premier Sri Lankan newspaper in Europe-Lanka Tribune won the much-coveted Media Organisation of the Year Award at the Inaugural UK Lanka Times Community Excellence Awards recently.

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Lanka Tribune Rasantha Cooray received the award at the award ceremony at Holiday Inn Brentford Lock in London.

Despite its mere eight months of existence, the newspaper has received accolades from several high-profile personalities from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to Former Prime Minister Tony Blair and even from celebrities like Kate Moss.

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.

It has partnered with a number of events catering for the Sri Lankan community, by being the official media partner including the Festival of Cricket - the largest gathering of Sri Lankans in Europe and Gypsies tour of United Kingdom as well to a host of other concerts by famous Sri Lankan artistes.

The newspaper distributed in the 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 has a readership of around 32,000 of mainly high-end business oriented readers.

The Lanka Tribune was initially launched in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leicester, Dublin, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Paris and Rome, with the goal of expanding circulation to many other European cities within next year.

“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 Rasantha 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 over 48,000.” Cooray added.