The Journal celebrates successful first year with flood of award nominations

The Journal celebrated its first birthday last week while collecting a brace of award nominations from the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA) of Scotland – representing its seventh and eighth national award nominations for 2008.

The PPA Scotland Awards represent the first opportunity for The Journal to compete against professional publications such as The List and The Big Issue.

The Journal was nominated in the "Best Magazine: Small Publishing Company" category while founding-editor Ben Judge is up for "Editor of the Year: Consumer Magazine".

Mr Judge said: "It is obviously a great achievement for The Journal to be ranked alongside established, professional publications with the pedigree of The List and Big Issue Scotland.

"Our performance over the course of our first year should be a real source of pride for all those involved in making The Journal such a success and we will be looking to build on this in future years."

Since its first issue was published on 5 November 2007, The Journal has been nominated for eight awards, including Best Newspaper at both The Herald Scottish Student Press Awards and The Guardian Student Media Awards.

Having picked up the New Media Award at The Scottish Student Press Awards in May, The Journal is looking to add to its collection when both The Guardian and PPA Scotland Awards are announced at the end of this month.