Adoption-net and its sister sites have won a top national award.

Northcliffe Electronic Publishing (Midlands), which owns the sites, won the prestigious 'Special Award for Innovation in Digital Publishing' at the Newspaper Society New Media Awards yesterday.

NEP was chosen for a selection of ten services, including regional journalism site holdthefrontpage.co.uk, four Midlands region Beehive sites for community network sites, a regional online births, deaths and marriages initiative; the launch of thisisbollywood.co.uk, two Government-funded sites srbcommunity.co.uk and srbbusiness.co.uk, an amateur writing website TooWrite.com and Adoption-net.

The judges said the company showed a commitment to developing niche products outside the usual internet publisher audience and "evidence of reach to customers beyond the traditional newspaper audience".

Adoption-net was also commended after being been shortlisted for the best niche internet site award but was pipped at the post by the Manchester Evening News website sportloco.com which also won the award for best online community service and was picked as the awards' Internet Site of the Year.