Hot Press was among the major winners at the PPAI Magazine of the Year Awards, the winners of which were announced last night.

Niall Stokes was named Editor of the Year, an award which reflected the extraordinary number of big stories broken by Hot Press this year, as well as the magazine’s remarkable achievement in strengthening its position as the leading music and youth culture title on the island of Ireland, against all the international competition.

“It has been an amazing year for Hot Press,” Niall Stokes says. “We started with the Drugs Issue, in February, which everyone on the editorial team was rightly proud of – it was a landmark statement about one of the really important issues in contemporary youth culture.

“Where music is concerned, we’ve consistently broken big news stories stories on hotpress.com, and we’ve also delivered brilliant cover stories – from Kings of Leon through Irish artists like The Blizzards, Lisa Hannigan and Snow Patrol to our recent interviews with Oasis and The Killers. And of course there was the Morrissey exclusive that fans all over the world have been hunting down ever since.

“Throughout the year, the writing in Hot Press has been brilliant as always. And aside from all of that we have done a remarkable number of major non-music interviews that have become part of the national news agenda. The entire Hot Press team has a lot to be proud of.”

There was also the small matter of a new format, and a new logo – both of which were launched in March.

“We felt that a change was important to allow us to further develop and improve the editorial offer, and to make the magazine even more effective on the news stands,” Hot Press publishing director Duan Stokes says. “The design team did a fantastic job, giving the magazine a complete remix, and coming up with a superb new logo and look that is powerfully contemporary but also has a classic sense of style. We also introduced a new lifestyle and fashion section, which has been a big success, broadening the magazine's appeal and placing music against the backdrop of all those other things that are important to people on an everyday basis.”

The major stories published by Hot Press this year have been too numerous to list, but there have been some undeniable standouts:

*The Hot Press Drugs Issue, with major contributions from Stuart Clark, Olaf Tyaransen and Brendan Hogan.
*The cover story with Glan Hansard and Marketa Irglova at the time of their Oscar triumph.
*The John Gilligan Interview, by Jason O’Toole, that continues to make headlines.
*The Morrissey interview, which featured a topless Morrissey on the cover and a world exclusive interview inside.
*The Kieran Ducie interview, giving for the first time in detail his version of events on the night and morning of the death of model Katie French
*The Charlie McCreevy interview (in the latest Hot Press) that is currently creating reverberations around Europe.

Hot Press also ran the Music Show in October – a hugely successful event, bringing all of the strands of the Irish music industry together under one roof at the RDS.

“Having scooped the Website of the Year award last year and the Magazine of the Year, Publisher of the Year and Website of the Year categories in previous years, there was only one major award that Hot Press had still to win,” Hot Press marketing manager Mark Hogan comments. “Given the year that was in it, and the number of scoops that we have delivered, and the excitement that the magazine has created, I think the accolade of Editor of the Year is the one that we would have wanted.”