The Athens Banner-Herald and the Red and Black both recently won online honors at the 2011 Editor and Publisher EPPY Awards.

The Banner-Herald won EPPYs for the best social media platform and best sports blog with under 250,000 monthly visitors with AthensTalks.com and DogBytes Online, respectively.

“When we created Athens Talks and DogBytes, for the first time we were able to engage and interact with our readers online on a more personal level,” said Banner-Herald Director of Audience Andrea Griffith. “They are both really different than what other papers are doing.”

“These awards are validation that what we’re doing is the right thing to do.”

The Red and Black, the University of Georgia’s student newspaper, took home the EPPY for the best college or university newspaper website.

The Red and Black strived this semester to drive more traffic to its website as a main source of news, Editor in Chief Rachel Bowers said. Students uploaded more than a dozen stories daily to the site.

“I’m proud of our staff for grinding it out in an effort to become digital first,” Bowers said. “It’s special for us that people realize the hard work that we put in. It’s a huge honor.”

Editor and Publisher presents EPPY Awards in 43 categories every year to honor the best media websites.