The Irish Times has won four of the 12 ESB National Media Awards for 2002, including the overall award for Journalist of the Year.
Conor O'Clery, the newspaper's North America Editor, won News Reporter of the Year and Journalist of the Year for his coverage of the September 11th attacks in New York.
Political Journalist of the Year went to Mark Hennessy, while Columnist of the Year was awarded to John McManus, who writes the weekly Business Opinion column.
RTÉ journalists won three awards while the rest were shared by the Irish Examiner, Irish Independent, Sunday Tribune, Evening Echo and the Sunday Independent with the website irishhealth.com.
Accepting his awards, Mr O'Clery, who is based in New York, said it was ironic that while he had travelled the world for decades in search of news for The Irish Times, one of the major news events of the age happened "right outside my window".
While working during the days that followed, he held his own feelings in suspense.
The immensity of the human suffering began to hit home only when he saw relatives of victims posting notices in search of their loved ones on the city's walls and lamp-posts.
Mr Hennessy thanked the new Irish Times Editor, Ms Geraldine Kennedy, who he said was as much responsible for his award-winning series on Sinn Féin's electoral success as he was.
Mr McManus won the award for columns on the regulation of pharmacies and the SSIA scheme.
The awards were presented by the Minister for Communications, Mr Ahern.
A special award was made by the ESB to Mr Michael Mills, the former journalist and Ombudsman. In his acceptance speech, Mr Mills caused a minor stir among the audience at the Mansion House, Dublin. He said newspapers had exposed a great deal in the 1990s but he had "watched in some horror during the recent general election to see my old colleagues being led around by the nose, by Fianna Fáil propagandists for the most part, but also Fine Gael propagandists" and others.
The chairman of the judging panel, Prof Brian Farrell, acknowledged in his address that there had been some controversy over the way the awards scheme had been run. "No one pretends the process as it exists is perfect," he said, "but we have already set about making changes - bringing in new judges and agreeing that for the future no one serve more than three years." Also the number of awards had been reduced.
He said a comprehensive review of the scheme would now begin, and everyone was invited to make suggestions.
But he stressed: "Let there be no ambiguity about who owns the awards. These awards belong to us - the journalistic and broadcasting profession. They acknowledge and recognise excellence in Irish media as judged by fellow professionals. No one else is involved or responsible."