DailyHerald.com among top news sites in Midwest

The Daily Herald on Thursday announced its redesigned Web site won a regional design award, and two of its reporters won Northern Illinois Newspaper Association awards.

The MidwestBusiness.com list of Top 10 Midwest Newspaper Web Sites ranked sites based on "overall navigation, look and feel, uniqueness and content," according to MidwestBusiness.com, an Internet business and technology site.

The Daily Herald's site, dailyherald.com, ranked third and was cited for its "overall visually appealing, quality content." The Detroit News was named the top site and the Chicago Tribune was second.

In a separate recognition, Daily Herald reporters Michael Sean Comerford and Sue Ter Maat recently received awards in three Northern Illinois Newspaper Association categories.

Comerford won first place in the business category for a series of stories called "McDonald's in China," which offered a behind the scenes look at the growing U.S. fast-food market in China.

Ter Maat won first place in the religion category for her story "Helping Themselves," about health care and retirement issues facing an aging community of nuns. She also won second place in the in-depth news story category for "Sacred Ground," in which she chronicled the fight to keep a cemetery from being paved over for the O'Hare International Airport expansion.