The Grid named best designed newspaper, again, but also wins awards as magazine

The Grid, the newspaper that walks like a magazine, or vice-versa, has won big time again at the annual Society for News Design (SND) awards. The publication, which is owned by Torstar, won as best-designed newspaper in the world for the second year in a row and managed to create a furor when it won in a magazine category as well, taking silver medals for overall magazine design, magazine cover story design/features and magazine cover story design.  

We'll let the memo to staff from publisher and editor in chief Laas Turnbull speak for itself:

• out of 9,300 global entries, The Grid won 3 silvers out of only 36 awarded
• we won world’s best designed newspaper for the second year in a row
• something unprecedented: we won both world’s best designed newspaper and were awarded the only silver in the best overall magazine design category (there’s no world’s best in that category). Apparently, this caused a huge flap at SND, so there’s talk of changing the rules next year to prevent any future cross-media winners. Hopefully, it will be referred to as the Grid Rule or Grid Exception hence.  

(It should be noted that The Grid's unabashed newspaper/magazine hybridity caused some muttering closer to home when it won four golds and two silver awards at the National Magazine Awards, though it is described by its owners, Torstar, as a weekly newspaper. The Grid calls itself a "weekly city magazine".)

The judges who made the SPD gold award said 

The Grid feels ahead of its time when many newspapers lack freshness. It knows exactly what the readers need and expect, and it goes deep in the search for stories.