Just a few weeks ago, the Spanish Soitu.es news site was praised for its “where core ideas come through as confident innovation and mesh with traditional journalism to create a fresh and distinctive package”. The words came from the judges at the Online News Association awards, where Soitu.es was, for a second year running, as an example of excellence in online journalism. But the pioneering news site is closing down.

Spain made a big impresson at the Online News Association awards, picking up the two awards that non-English websites were eligible for. Elpais.com took the newly created award for general excellence by a large non-English site. Its compatriot, Soitu.es, won the general excellence title for small site. One is an example of how a print newspaper is reinventing itself online. The other is a an independent, web-only new site, just