The Vodacom Journalist of The Year, now in its ninth year, strives to honour the very best journalism talent that South Africa has to offer. The awards salute the very best work across the entire spectrum of media disciplines. The finalists for the national round are made up of the winners of the regional awards.
"With all news and factual reporting, journalists need to inform the audience about daily occurrences, to depict the bad, to highlight the excellent, but also to find stories which we are unfamiliar with and uninformed about," said Robin Sewlal, convener of judges.
Met all requirements
According to the judging panel, the piece - on South Africa having one of the highest birth rates of inter-sexed babies worldwide - was chosen as the overall winner as it met all of the above requirements. The persons interviewed in this feature were courageous - their stories uncovered the tragedy and pathos of their lives which were damaged at birth.
"We have been most encouraged by the depth of talent that we have seen during the course of the competition this year. It demonstrates that great effort is being put into developing the profession further," said Portia Maurice, chief officer: corporate affairs for the Vodacom Group.
All the winners
| Category | Winner | Publication | Story title/focus | Citation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TV News | Paula Chowles and Jo Komane | eNews | The harsher side of the recession | There is often a paucity of truly unique news stories. So often our bulletins contain similar stories from different angles and it is a pleasure to see a truly original news item. This piece achieves this by showing the impact of the recession in a most unexpected way. The human face of the financial crisis is rarely portrayed as strikingly. Here the most vulnerable in society are babies abandoned due to economic hardship. Orphanages not only have to deal with an increased intake but adoptions are also now down by more than 40%. |
| TV Feature | Barbara Friedman | 3rd Degree | Boy/Girl | This is journalism at its finest, seeking and speaking to those who are normally invisible to an audience. It highlights how the tragedy of their lives is further impacted upon by poverty and portrays the complexities and difficulties experienced by those born inter-sexed and who have undergone surgery at birth to reassign their gender, with terrible consequences. South Africa has one of the highest rates in the world. of one in five hundred babies born inter-sexed. |
| Print News | Piet Rampedi | City Press | Julius Malema's business Empire | Collecting information from authentic sources is very important when working on a breaking news story. Such a story often not only reaches television viewers and newspaper readers but also policy-making stakeholders. While time and accuracy are the most important factors in reporting a breaking news story, updating the news story is very necessary as the facts and figures change momentarily. |
| Print Feature | Rowan Philp | Sunday Times | Haiti Earthquake | Reporting on disasters and conflicts is no easy task. A good and experienced journalist understands how to cover conflicts and disasters by reporting on different aspects in an effort to encourage the donor agencies and volunteers to rush towards the affected areas to provide relief and rehabilitation rather than create panic in the community. Covering the Haiti earthquake was a challenging assignment. Many journalists descended on the island but only a few provided insightful and spine-chilling reports. |
| Radio Feature | Teboho | Letshaba | SABC | The winning entry powerfully captured the plight of those at the heart of the story - the victims. The final product was a gripping and heart-wrenching story. The script was interesting and the facts laid out in a logical format. In a matter of minutes the reporter educated and informed. He told of the plight of young women who. under the guise of being found jobs, are trafficked from all corners of the country and from across our borders, to be used and abused. They are plied with drugs and alcohol, and then forced into a life of prostitution. Their lives are turned into double slavery, serving two masters - their pimps and their insatiable drug habit. The story highlighted the challenges faced by these women, who cannot save themselves from their gutter existence. |
| Radio News | Zanele Buthelezi | SABC Radio News | 2010 FIFA World-Cup kick off | This was one of the most powerful stories on the 100 days to the 2010 FIFA kick-off. The story format was perfect for radio news and all the elements that make a radio news story were captured. The sound choice was impeccable, the script newsworthy and excellently crafted, with the presentation authoritative and the research well done. The story was well balanced, the choice of voices diverse and the commentary fair. |
| Financial/Economic | Lloyd Gedye | Mail & Guardian | Bread price-fixing scandal | The greed amongst some sectors in South Africa is limitless. This shameful behaviour becomes even more distasteful when it seeks to administer the final nail into the tenuous life of a group already suffering the deep scars of poverty, a group that has nowhere else to turn to, but stick with the available staple food, which is bread. The piec reveals the elaborate extent that conspirators in the bread price-fixing scandal had to go through, in order to cheat and disadvantage their customers, the consumers of bread, the majority of whom are poor and depend largely on this product for their daily living. Yet the manufacturers of bread, which are part of the multinationals in the country, appeared oblivious to this fact as they were primarily focused on making huge profits. |
| Columnist | Babalwa Shota | City Press | Series of columns | Writing a good column requires more than just the ability to articulate an opinion. It takes skill and talent and challenges a writer to connect intimately with the reader. Columnists cannot afford to be boring; they must have strong opinions and be able to articulate and defend them. Columnists need to be entertaining and must give readers a reason to follow them. Love or hate them, the readers must be compelled to engage with their writing - daily, weekly or monthly. A good columnist can move a reader to laughter, tears or anger through the skilful use of words. They can persuade and convince. In her weekly series of articles, our winner presents life's cameos in a way which sees both the comical and the serious side of life. She laughs at herself as well as others. She admonishes, she critiques, she is angry, she is happy. The result is a series of well-written, well-rounded articles that capture the essence of life. |
| Cartoonist | Anthony Stidolph | The Witness | Series of cartoons | Cartoonists use humour and satire to depict serious, shocking and ridiculous news in a light hearted manner. With those simple, funny pictures, good cartoonists can capture the reader's mind in a way that a thousand words simply cannot. They can produce extraordinarily thoughtful and powerful messages that can sway minds and influence trends. Good newspapers seek out good cartoonists because they soon develop a cult following beneficial to the publication. Our winner this year is on his way to developing such a national following. Through his unique use of caricature our winner depicts our day-to-day reality. He takes our news headlines - even the most serious - and laughs with the reader yet, at the same time, provokes thinking and communication. |
| Photography | Charl Devenish | Volksblad | Honour | The competition for the category of photography as journalism art was hotly contested this year. It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this rings true if context and levels of meaning are accounted for in interpreting a persona, object or event. The winning entry was outstanding in composition and technical proficiency. |
| Sport | Dominic Peel | Daily Dispatch | Kei Cricket in Disarray | Sport has tremendous ability to bring people from all walks of life together. It's attractive to the young and the not-so-young in equal measure. The real value generated from engaging in sporting activities cannot be accurately gauged. On the flipside, should a sport encounter stormy weather, then the impact could very well prove disastrous. And so it turned murky in a code of sport, as brilliantly captured by the journalist. He leaves no stone unturned in getting to the bottom of the misdeeds inflicted on a sport which at one time was riding the crest of the wave. Financial wrangles, disregard for proper governance matters and marred elections contributed to the sporting body being left out in the cold. Players of all ages and coaches sadly saw their sport languishing in tatters. |
| Community Media | Paddy Hartegen | Watt Now | Shortage of engineers | The writer delivered a thought-provoking body of work which addresses a problem that South Africa cannot ignore - the critical shortage of engineers in the country, which is the genesis of the national service delivery crisis. Most South Africans already know that the current service delivery situation is a disturbing reality - so what? At this point the writer stretches the reader's mind and skillfully suggests an answer - train engineers. Newsrooms and journalism schools teach that the mark of a good journalist is to confront a complex subject and decode it for the reader and the writer does this admirably. Engineering is often considered a dull subject by the masses; however, the writer managed to unpack this "dull" subject and provide balanced and fair reporting that presents the facts in a palatable fashion. The master stroke by the writer in this body of work is that he writes about the tip of the iceberg, but his work convinces that he understands the part submerged in the water below. Ernest Hemmingway would be nodding his head in approval. |
| Online | Livhuwani Mammburu | Times Live | Mining Series | The immense contribution of mining to the economic development of this country over the past decades is common knowledge. With the millions of jobs created by this important sector has undeniably come inestimable economic prosperity, which resulted in the sustainable development of cities and many communities across the country. But mining's success story has not come without a price on the environment, leaving a footprint of degradation and disease in its wake. This entry commendably uses multimedia to bring home the horrors of rampant mining as it encroaches on rural communities and critical farming land while polluting underground water. It also traces the dark side of illegal mining in the shadow of dangerous gangs, who ruthlessly control the activity with the barrel of the gun. |
| Editor's Choice | Vicus Bürger | Volksblad | Editor's Choice | This is a special category for Vodacom and South African Journalism. Nominated by a media editor and interviewed rigorously by the panel of judges, the winner had to satisfy many criteria, including an understanding of the media landscape and insight and knowledge of current affairs. The winner also had to demonstrate ambassadorial qualities for international representation and show potential for journalistic leadership in future. Vodacom is proud to announce that this young journalist has shown honest commitment to his craft and huge potential. |
| Lifetime Achiever's Award | Raymond Louw | N/A | Lifetime Achiever | Our lifetime achiever recipient is a feisty media freedom activist and an award-winning journalist. He is an author, writer and outspoken media freedom lobbyist who is regarded by many of his colleagues and peers as a "true gentleman". His courage has earned him numerous awards and accolades in South Africa, Africa and the world. His name is synonymous with the many groundbreaking events, debates and forums for media freedom in Africa and the rest of the world. He has made and continues to make a significant contribution to ensure South Africa's media operates in an environment that is free of intimidation and suppression. He is a former editor and general manager of the noteworthy anti-apartheid newspaper, the Rand Daily Mail. As a young journalist at the newspaper he was shot and wounded by apartheid police while on a reporting assignment. He also served as a news editor at the Sunday Times and worked on newspapers in Sussex, Cumbria and London, England. During the apartheid era he headed the Media Defence Trust which was set up to defend journalists, publications, film and video producers, broadcasters and authors against court actions or other censorship practices. In the run-up to SA's first democratic elections in 1994, as chairman of the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI), he was appointed to the Independent Media Commission to ensure that state broadcasting and state-financed publications were impartial. Apart from his past journalistic roles, he also has an illustrious career as a media professional who has served on a range of media organisations - locally and abroad, including executive positions on the International Press Institute, the FXI and the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), and chair of the Media Freedom Sub-Committee of the SA National Editors Forum (SANEF). He continues to address international and other gatherings on media freedom issues and most recently was interviewed extensively on the proposed Protection of Information Bill and the ANC's proposed Media Appeals Tribunal (MAT). He is the Editor of the Southern Africa Report, a weekly current affairs publication which launched in 1983. He is the chairperson of the SA Press Council which administers the press ombudsman system of press self-regulation. He is a council member of SANEF - where he has been awarded several times for his outstanding contribution to the organisation's lobby for a free media in SA. |
| Overall National Winner | Barbara Friedman | e.tv | Girl/Boy | With all news and factual reporting, journalists need to inform us about what is occurring on an everyday level; they need to depict the bad, highlight the excellent, but also find stories that we are unfamiliar with and uninformed about. This piece was chosen as the overall winner as it meets all of these requirements. The people interviewed are brave and courageous and their stories expose us to the tragedy and pathos of their lives being inadvertently damaged at birth. The Vodacom Journalist of the Year 2010 award goes to a journalist who, with great insight, sensitivity and humility exposes us to a world not known or understood by many. |
A charitable organisation will also benefit as an amount equal to the R125 000 cash, won by the overall Vodacom Journalist of the Year award winner, will be donated to her charity of choice.
This year the associate sponsors included Budget Car Hire, Internet Express, JSE Limited, Mango, Media Express, Nokia and Protea Hotels.
For more, go to http://journalist.vodacom.co.za.
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