The Golden Neilies media awards for a year of schlock and awe

It’s that time of the year again when the media world awaits agog for the only awards that matter - I’m speaking, of course, of the coveted "Neilies": the Golden Brillo Pad which all media folk aspire to have on their mantelpiece. So, let’s put everyone out of their state of nervous excitement and name the winners.

Tabloid of the year goes to Piers Morgan’s Mirror. It makes more waves than any other red-top, whether it’s annoying the White House or Buckingham Palace. Just when you think Mr Morgan must be for the chop, his P45 in the post, he pulls another sales-winning rabbit out of the hat, and it’s trebles all round until the next crisis.

Broadsheet of the year goes to Robert Thomson’s Times. I know some think it dull, but Mr Thomson has made its coverage of major issues more comprehensive, and the tone is more serious - no easy achievement when your proprietor is always pushing you downmarket. All the Times needs to do now is find a new leader writer (the editorials are dire), settle into this more restrained groove and accept that its natural circulation is around 500,000.

Scoop of the year goes to the Mirror’s Ryan Parry for exposing that security is a sham at Buckingham Palace, something most of us knew already - but to infiltrate the palace on the eve of President George Bush’s visit was a stroke of genius.

Sales success of the year is the Daily Mail (again). Last month, sales were close to 2.5million. In a declining market, the Mail continues to enjoy a steady, relentless rise, as befits what is probably the most professional newspaper in the world. Richard Desmond, the Express proprietor, says he’s out to destroy the Mail; hell will freeze over first.

Innovation of the year belongs naturally to the Independent. It was a bold move to go tabloid, and almost certainly the start of a significant trend. Readers will know I don’t quite share the view that the paper’s fortunes have been transformed by its downsizing. But there is no question the tabloid experiment has reversed years of circulation decline. The Times has already copied the move, and others will follow suit.

Newspaper of the year - the grandest Neilie of them all - goes to the Observer. Its comment and analysis are in a class of their own and its news less flammed-up than most Sundays’. Roger Alton, the editor, took a brave pro-Iraq-war line which was bound to be unpopular with his liberal-Left readership (and staff); newspapers are often at their best when they go against their own grain - and the Obs is our overall winner.

That concludes the major awards for this year, but the judges (me and Sandy the Labrador) have decided on several less significant ones, some of which cover the lesser media arts of broadcasting.

The "how much longer will it go on?" award goes jointly to Piers Morgan’s editorship at the Mirror (see above), Geoffrey Robinson’s increasingly sterile ownership of the New Statesman, and to the Sunday People (which serves no conceivable purpose).

The "best car-crash TV" award goes to Michael Parkinson for his interview with the completely unco-operative Meg Ryan. The "most-self-serving-documentary" award goes to John Leslie for his home movie about the famous rape accusation, while Aaron Barschak’s gatecrashing of Prince William’s birthday party comes first in the "biggest media hoo-ha created by a non-entity" category.

The winner of "the most grovelling apology of the year" goes to the Sunday Telegraph, after it suggested a link between Mohamed al-Fayed and Osama bin Laden. The same paper also wins "the largest number of front-page leads obviously planted by the security services" award, which may explain the apology.

Rod Liddle wins the "most ubiquitous pundit" award, the "best PR stunt" goes to George Bush and his Thanksgiving turkey, while the "best exposure of a PR stunt" goes to the Guardian for revealing that the turkey was a fake.

The "most obviously doomed attempt to stay in a job in the face of a media uproar" award is shared by Margaret Hodge, Geoff Hoon, Andrew Gilligan and John Scarlett.

And on that note, I bring the 2003 Neilies to an end. Congratulations to the winners - any losers with a beef should take the matter up with Sandy.

To those who complain that the Sunday Times never gets any major scoops these days, I think we can safely say that its publication of the minutes of the honours committee was a pretty decent exclusive.

I was naturally surprised not to see my own name among those in the media being considered for a New Year’s honour - though my dismay at this scandalous omission (clearly a bureaucratic oversight) was alleviated by the revelation that it was time to dole out a knighthood to Simon Jenkins because the committee considered him "more distinguished" than Max Hastings, who already has one. That must have had Sir Max choking on his Sunday fry-up.

More seriously, in what way is this committee of establishment jobsworths qualified to make such a judgment? Both Mr Hastings and Mr Jenkins have distinguished careers as editors and columnists. They both used to work for me, and I would not like to choose between them; nor, I suspect, would any of their colleagues.

Yet an anonymous bunch of civil servants, sounding for all the world like a collection of Sir Bufton Tuftons gathered round the fireplace at White’s, takes it upon itself to make such fine judgments, while indiscriminately spraying their own kind with gongs of every description.

The Sunday Times scoop only reinforces my view that the whole honours farce should be scrapped. Not wise words to write, you might say, if you have hopes of appearing on the 2005 list. In fact I don’t, for I already have an award more precious than anything the committee could give. It was awarded in 1986 by the Press Gazette, and the citation has pride of place on my office wall. What was it for? I confess the category was unusual. I came first among editors "least likely ever to be awarded a knighthood".

The news of Saddam Hussein’s capture could not have come at a worse time for newspapers: several hours after the Sundays had hit the doormat and a whole day before the dailies could catch up.

Most Monday editions did magnificently, with some wonderful page layouts, comprehensive coverage and fine writing. But for those of us who had followed events as they unfolded throughout Sunday on the news channels and the main evening bulletins, the papers brought little that was fresh or original. Editors naturally gave great page-one prominence to pictures of the captured tyrant; yet we had seen them all already, endlessly, on television.

This is a dilemma for newspapers in an age of rolling TV news that nobody has yet resolved. Yesterday, the front pages were full of details of Saddam’s lair; thanks to relentlessly repeated TV footage, I felt I already knew his bunker better than my own bedroom. The Iraq war was the first major conflict that did not add to newspaper sales; I fear that Saddam’s capture the major news event of the year will fall into the same category.

Ithink I have solved the biggest headache confronting Rupert Murdoch: what should he get his wife for Christmas? After all, what do you get your average media mogul’s other half ? I stumbled across the answer by accident on Sunday night in, of all places, Bush Hall on the Uxbridge Road. Not old Rupe’s normal stamping ground, to be sure, but if he’d been there he’d have heard a lyrical new group, Marshmallow, in concert and among their repertoire is the delightful Ballad of Wendy Deng, a rather affectionate ditty about Rupe’s young Chinese wife (spiced, of course, with the odd barb; this is rock ’n’ roll, after all). So, what do you get the woman who has everything? Why, her own song, of course. Merry Christmas Rupert, Wendy, and all the other readers of this column.

A BAD head cold kept me from Monday night’s Independent Newspapers’ Christmas extravaganza, hosted by my old friend Ivan Fallon. I hear it was held among the elegant breakables of the Wedgwood store in Regent Street, a rather perilous venue for a party for drunken hacks.

I’m told that the room was bursting with contenders keen to take over the Telegraph - at one point, my spies tell me, there were no fewer than five different bidders in the room. Only Ivan is not thought to be among them. He’s staying faithful to running the Indy titles, which, I am happy to bet, will go fully tabloid in the coming year.