The Society for News Design on Saturday announced four World’s Best-Designed™ Newspapers — Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), De Morgen (Belgium), The Guardian (Britain) and Politiken (Denmark) — and one World’s Best-Designed™ winner from the digital competition, Facebook, at the conclusion of its 37th annual workshop, which convened at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.
World’s Best-Designed™ Newspapers: Judges’ statement

Judges: Steve Cavendish (Nashville Scene), Tracy Collins (Gannett’s Phoenix Design Studio), Anne Marie Owens (National Post), Emmet Smith (Washington Post), and Fevzi Yazici (Zaman).

We arrived in snowy Syracuse to stacks of 215 papers. After an initial cut, we took it down to 58, which we then further cut to 17 finalists over the course of two days.
That is the statistical analysis. The reality is considerably more agonizing and also more inspiring than the mere numbers convey.
Getting down to 58 that first long day was easy compared to what would come.
We saw great work from diverse regions around the world. We saw all manner of formats, dealing with all kinds of content.
The best papers we saw were the ones whose journalism transcended their formats. Whether we were looking at tabs, Berliners or broadsheets, it was the visual storytelling — the photography, the graphics, the art direction — that we reacted to. At the very best designed papers, the designers and editors understand how to deftly go beyond the do-no-harm approach to design, helping support a clear editorial voice and amplifying the journalism, both visual and written.
In that incredibly diverse group of 17 finalists we found fantastic work.
A common refrain around the table was, “I wish this was my paper. I wish this landed on my doorstep each morning.”
Among the finalists, nearly every one had at least one judge championing its cause to move on—that’s how that’s how good they all are. And that’s how difficult it was to choose the papers that would ultimately be named world’s best.
In the end, the four we chose were unanimous selections, papers whose brilliance was inescapable to each judge, regardless of the different backgrounds we brought to the competition.
It was excruciating and exhilarating.
What set this group of papers apart was the consistency of the intensity and dedication they poured into the product—not just the cover or the front page, not just the section fronts, but every single page.

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