“It’s great for Newsport and for all the people that put in so much work to ensure that we were in a position to nominated,” he said. 

Despite a common perception of Cyclone Ita being something of a ‘fizzer’, due mainly to energetic coverage by mainstream media outlets expecting it to cause devastation on par with Cyclone Yasi, Sam said Ita was still a serious weather event, especially to Cooktown, and was glad to be able to provide information to help people in its path. 

“I don’t think it wasn’t serious to anyone in Cooktown, where I had several colleagues,” he said.

“Media’s role when it comes to situations like this is to act as a conduit and get the relevant information out to everyone as effectively as possible and I was happy to be a part of that. 

“It’s always hard to gauge the potential impact of a cyclone that size, especially if people didn’t take the precautions they needed or didn’t have the right information.”

Newsport managing director Sam Cullen congratulated Sam Davis and said it was fitting the award came for coverage of Cyclone Ita, considering Newsport was launched in response to the inaccuracies in national and international coverage of Cyclone Larry. 

“I would just like to say great work and congratulations to Sam Davis and the rest of the team,” Mr Cullen said. 

“This is a great example of the importance of a local online news service for a community like Port Douglas both in providing that local news for residents and also bringing local issues to national prominence.”

The award winning article, since updated to “Cyclone Ita crosses Queensland coast” is viewable here.