Pioneering online news service SCOOP has been selected as one of three finalists for the 'Overall Excellence in Information Technology' award at the Computerworld Excellence Awards.

The Scoop team will assemble today, Friday 6 July, at Auckland's Edge Convention Centre for the Awards presentation.

The Wellington-based news provider, committed to the provision of "disintermediated news" and pointed commentary, has experienced exponential growth since launching just over two years ago.
On a typical day 5000 people from 37 countries read between 17,000 and 22,000 pages on Scoop.

Scoop delivers around 600,000 pages and 150,000 solicited emails a month to desktops around New Zealand and the world.
Access rates indicate that typical Scoop subscribers access the service from work, with peak reading time each day between 4pm and 5pm after the daily headline update.

As well as providing readers with all the key political and business news of the day, and a media monitor reporting on daily TV and radio news coverage, Scoop provides regular and popular hard-hitting commentary from writers such as Russell Brown (Hard News), Lindsay Perigo (Free Radical), Simon Upton (Upton Online), John and Maree Howard (Howard's End), Keith Rankin and the mysterious and scurrilous CD Sludge (The Sludge Report).

Images of New Zealand from countryside to rugby field have also proved popular, as has Scoop coverage - in association with theonering.net - of the goings on at The Lord of The Rings film production in Wellington.

Scoop was selected from close to 400 entries as one of three finalists for the key 'Overall Excellence in Information Technology' award.
Scoop editor Alastair Thompson says that Scoop's adoption of the native culture of the Internet has been key to its industry recognition.

"Scoop set out from the start to reinforce the strengths and unique characteristics of the online news environment. Of these immediacy and personality are perhaps the most important.

"The Internet enables interaction, a sense of community and freedom of expression. The Internet is also inherently a little rebellious.
"Our mainstream news competitors - especially here in the New Zealand environment - with their huge loss-leading budgets are in reality little more than cut-down versions of 'real-world' media.

"Scoop on the other hand is formed out of the internet. It is an example of the power, personality and scope that this new medium enables.
"Our recognition today is an acknowledgement not only of what we have done, but of the work of hundreds of contributors from the communications industry around the country. Scoop thanks them and trusts it can count on their continued support."

For a full list of finalists in the Computerworld Excellence Awards see... http://www.idg.net.nz/cwea/2001finalists.html

Scoop editor Alastair Thompson is available for further comment today on 021 70 70 44.

© Scoop Media

Alastair Thompson

Scoop Publisher

Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

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