PinkNews awarded Publisher and App of the Year at prestigious Drum Awards 2023

PinkNews took home two major honours at The Drum Awards for Online Media 2023.

The Drum Awards, which recognise the world’s best media outlets and digital campaigns, awarded PinkNews Publisher of the Year and App of the Year.

PinkNews, the world’s most-read LGBTQ+ outlet, beat out The Independent, Woo (by ITV) and Al Jazeera YouTube for the Publisher award.

It comes after a year of huge growth for the company, with new investment into its industry-leading LGBTQ+ journalism.

Managing editor Nic Keaney said: “We are beyond thrilled to receive Drum Awards Publisher of the Year.

“This award is a testament to PinkNews’ unwavering commitment to amplifying LGBTQ+ voices and stories, and serves as a powerful reminder of the impact our platform is having both within the community and beyond.

“In a world where the very existence of our community is still questioned, we proudly represent the voice of a new majority that celebrates diversity, inclusion, and the transformative power of authentic storytelling.

“We will continue pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo of legacy media organisations to ensure our voices are heard. Thank you to our incredible team and the community for their unwavering support.”

App of the Year was also awarded to PinkNews. This follows a complete rebuild of its iOS and Android apps in November 2022, which put users at the heart of the design.

In an industry first, the app features an “uplifting news” filter which enables users to only see positive news stories.

Sarah Watson, chief product officer at PinkNews, said: “We are delighted that the newly redesigned and rearchitected PinkNews app has won App of the Year at the Drum’s Online Media Awards.

“At PinkNews, we seek to provide an alternative to the dated legacy news brands and so when rebuilding our iOS and Android apps, we wanted to offer our global audience features that no other news publisher offers.”

She continued: “The most exciting of these market-first features is our unique ‘Uplifting News Filter’ and we are incredibly proud that this was cited by the judges of this prestigious award.

“The Reuters Institute recently found that 55 per cent of UK users who avoid consuming the news do this because of not wanting the news to have a negative impact on their mood.

“To try and counter news avoidance, we created a simple-to-use feature that we are testing first on our apps, where users can opt-in to a positive-only newsfeed from PinkNews, when that suits their mood. We’re seeing that the Uplifting News Filter, along with the other personalisation options of our in-house built app, have seen increased dwell time and repeat visits.”

She added: “We are excited to roll out some of the industry-first features from our app to our desktop and mobile website over the coming months, to give greater control to our millions of users.”

The Drum Awards for Online Media took place online on Tuesday (13 June) and were judged by senior staff from NewsUK, The Athletic, ELLE, LadBible, Metro and ITV News. 

The double-win follows PinkNews being named Editorial Team of the Year at last year’s event.

PinkNews also won Best Snapchat Shows Producer and Best Snapchat show for Closet Critic at the 2023 Digiday Video and TV Awards.

With more than 100 million unique users per month across its website, app and social media platforms, PinkNews is the world’s foremost LGBTQ+ publisher.