NewPage Honored as One of 'America's Most Admired' in Its Industry by FORTUNE Magazine

MIAMISBURG, Ohio, March 7 /PRNewswire/ -- NewPage Corporation today announced that it ranked among the top five companies in 2008 in the Forest and Paper Products sector of FORTUNE magazine's annual report of "America's Most Admired Companies." NewPage also was noted among the top eleven most admired companies in the State of Ohio.

"We are honored to be one of FORTUNE's "America's Most Admired" in 2008 for the first time. At NewPage, we are as committed to our customers, employees, investors, communities and environment as we are to producing high quality paper products. We have been working diligently to become the preferred printing paper company in North America, and with our recent acquisition of Stora Enso North America, we are well on our way to achieving that goal," said Rick Willett, president and chief operating officer.

NewPage received an overall score of 5.37 out of 10 (0 - 10, poor to excellent) possible points in the categories of innovation, people management, use of corporate assets, social responsibility, quality of management, financial soundness, long-term investment and quality of products/services.

"We are very proud of our combined strengths including top quality products and services, product innovation, environmental leadership, sustainable financial returns, and a talented management team. It is extremely rewarding to be recognized as one of the leaders in these categories. We attribute this accomplishment to our most valuable asset, our people. We feel our substantial investment in Lean Six Sigma training and other development has rewarded us with this recognition as well as the ability to continuously improve. NewPage strives to be among the best places to work," added Willett.

NewPage ranked 820 in the 2007 list of FORTUNE 1,000 companies. To learn more about NewPage Corporation, visit www.NewPageCorp.com.

About NewPage Corporation

Headquartered in Miamisburg, Ohio, NewPage Corporation is the largest printing paper manufacturer in North America, based on production capacity, with more than $4.3 billion in pro forma net sales for the last twelve months ended September 30, 2007. The company's product portfolio is the broadest in North America and includes coated freesheet, coated groundwood, supercalendered, newsprint and specialty papers. These papers are used for corporate collateral, commercial printing, magazines, catalogs, books, coupons, inserts, newspapers, packaging applications and direct mail advertising.

NewPage owns paper mills in Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nova Scotia, and Wisconsin. These mills have a total annual production capacity of approximately 5.5 million tons of paper, including 4.3 million tons of coated paper, 920,000 tons of uncoated paper and 300,000 tons of specialty paper, as well as approximately 3.2 million tons of pulp.

About FORTUNE's Most Admired List

The Most Admired list is the definitive report card on corporate reputations. FORTUNE's survey partners at Hay Group started with the FORTUNE 1,000 -- the 1,000 largest U.S. companies ranked by revenue -- and the top foreign companies operating in the U.S. They sorted the companies by industry and selected the ten largest companies in each. To create the 64 industry lists, Hay asked executives, directors and analysts to rate companies in their own industry on eight criteria, from investment value to social responsibility. This year only the best are listed as Most Admired: A company's score must rank in the top half of its industry survey.

To create the top 20, an overall list of Most Admired Companies, the Hay Group asked 3,721 executives, directors, and securities analysts who had responded to the industry surveys to select the ten companies they admired most. They chose from a list made up of the companies that ranked in the top 25% in last year's survey, plus those that finished in the top 20% of their industry. Anyone could vote for any company in any industry. The difference in the voting rolls is why some results can seem anomalous, for example, Johnson & Johnson is one of the top 10 Most Admired Companies but only second in its own industry.

A total of 622 companies in 65 industries were surveyed. Due to an insufficient response rate, the results of ten companies in the energy industry are not reported. In addition, for 46 companies, only the aggregate scores and ranks are published due to the distribution of responses in the following five industries: (1) Internet Services and Retailing, (2) Mortgage Services, (3) Oil and Gas Equipment, Services (4) Wholesalers: Diversified and (5) Wholesalers: Food and Grocery.

To learn more about the FORTUNE Most Admired Companies, visit www.fortune.com.

About Hay Group

Hay Group, which has conducted the research for the World's Most Admired Companies list since 1997 and for America's Most Admired Companies since 2001, is a global management consulting firm with 88 offices in 47 countries. For information about Hay Group's services, go to www.haygroup.com.