On December 14, winners of the DOT Journalism 2025 annual contest for professional and aspiring journalists writing about domains and other internet addressing systems, received their prizes during the Runet Prize 2025 awards ceremony. This year’s contest, held for the 13th time, is organized by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ and the Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC), with support from the Smart Internet Foundation.
More than 800 submissions covering such topics as the domain industry, digital technology and cybersecurity, participated in the 2025 contest, making it the largest contest over the 13 years.
The expert jury thoroughly reviewed all the submissions and selected winners in the following categories:
- Speaking and Writing in Russian: Anastasia Kalenitskaya (Rossiyskaya Gazeta)
- Domain Coffee Break: How’s Life in the Industry: Timur Khaludorov (Rspectr.com)
- Domain Security/Danger: Yelizaveta Krylova (Izvestia)
- Domains in Lay Terms: Valentin Alfimov (Komsomolskaya Pradva Radio)
- Yunkory: Letuchka school newspaper (Kaliningrad)
Coordination Center Director Andrey Vorobyev and Press Service Director Irina Pyzhova presented diplomas and gifts to the winners.
“The DOT Journalism contest attracts more participants every year. The year when we celebrate a big anniversary for .РФ did not become an exception: the competition for the category celebrating 15 years of our national Cyrillic domain was immense. This demonstrates once again that the interest in mother-tongue domain names is growing. In 2025, the basic Cyrillic alphabet for .РФ has been expanded with 26 characters, allowing the registration of domain names in 18 more national languages of the ethnicities living in Russia. Also in 2025, we added a special category, Yunkory, won by the Letuchka school newspaper from Kaliningrad. In September, we held the 18th International Conference for ccTLD Registries and Registrars of CIS, Central and Eastern Europe (TLDCON 2025) in Kaliningrad. We were surprised to learn that school students understand and cover this seemingly specialized industry event in their school newspaper. Congratulations to all winners of the DOT Journalism 2025 contest. I wish them professional success and journalistic luck,” said Andrey Vorobyev.
The works of the contest winners are available at дотжурналистика.рф.
DOT Journalism has been held by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ and RAEC since 2012. The contest aims to acknowledge journalists who cover domain industry trends and developments, key events related to DNS and other internet addressing systems.
The contest was also established to popularize domain-related topics among internet users, highlight the advantages of owning a domain name, and enhance the professionalism and quality of reporting on internet addressing systems and new technologies.
