Fri, May 16, 2008 (2 a.m.)

The Las Vegas Sun’s Web site has been named as the top newspaper Web site of its size in the country.

The Sun site, at www.lasvegassun.com, on Thursday won one of the two highest “EPpy” awards at the annual Editor & Publisher/Mediaweek EPpy awards luncheon in Las Vegas.

The site won for “Best Overall Newspaper-Affiliated Web Site” with fewer than 1 million unique monthly visitors. The New York Times won the same award for newspapers with more than 1 million unique monthly visitors.

Other news organizations winning EPpys in various categories for their Web sites included CNN, USA Today, CBS, the Denver Post, MSNBC.com and People Magazine.

Michael J. Kelley, Sun managing editor, said the Sun appreciated the recognition from such a prestigious group of its peers, and called the award a tribute to “the easy and open relationship that has existed from the beginning between the Sun newsroom and the new media team” that produces the paper’s Web site.

“To win this award after only four months of having our new site up is amazing, and being in the company of The New York Times as the two best newspaper Web sites in the country is as good as it can get,” he said.

“And with the people we have and the convergence we have, we will only get better.”

Dave Toplikar, the Sun’s new media managing editor, also said the Web site is the result of a cooperative attitude between the Sun’s newsroom and the new media team.

“We couldn’t have done it without some of the most talented Web developers, reporters, editors and visual journalists in the world working on this,” Toplikar said.

“We’ve had tremendous help from the traditional journalists on the staff of the Sun newspaper who contribute extra content for the Web, including audio clips, documents, extra photos and ideas for interactive graphics and video,” he said. “You can’t do it this well without that kind of buy-in. But we’re still just getting started. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

The awards were presented as part of an interactive media conference held this week at the Rio Hotel and Casino.

More than 460 different media Web sites from across the world were entered in this year’s contest. The awards were judged in March and April by a panel of media experts who each dedicated several days to examine the Web sites, according to contest organizers.

The 50 judges were from news organizations that included USATODAY.com, the American Press Institute, the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, AOL, and Stephens Media Interactive, whose parent company owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The Sun was also a finalist in the best news site and best design categories. No other Nevada news operations won awards.