Friday, 29th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search
Breaking News:

Quill Award 2016… in search of new winners

By Gbenga Salau
11 April 2016   |   1:25 am
By Thursday, the curtain on the call for entries for this year’s Promasidor Quill award would be drawn, as the call for entries closes.

Thiry-2

By Thursday, the curtain on the call for entries for this year’s Promasidor Quill award would be drawn, as the call for entries closes. And the second phase, the journey to picking the winners commencing with the jury headed by Ambassador Dele Cole deciding on the best set of stories for the seven categories available in the award.

When the 2016 edition of the award was flagged off, the Managing Director of Promasidor Nigeria Limited, Olivier Thiry said then that despite the challenges and the negative economic outlook, the company decided to keep faith with organising the award because of the invaluable role of journalists in educating the public about issues of national interest, besides his company since commencing business in Nigeria years ago, has maintained an excellent relationship with the media.

Although like last edition, there were seven categories, there was rejig of the categories with a merger of two of the categories and an introduction of a new category. The Best report on children and nutrition were merged while Online reporter of the year was introduced. The other categories are: Education Reporter of the Year; Best CSR & Industry Report of the Year; Future Writer of the Year; Best Photo Story of the Year and Brand Advocate of the Year. Just like in the pass editions, all the winners will go home with Ipads, except the winner of the Best Photo Story of the Year who will get a high-end camera.

“In view of the consistent increase in the interest shown in the Quill Awards by journalists in Nigeria, Promasidor Nigeria has decided to refresh the categories by the addition of Best Online Reporter of the Year. We also merged the Best Report on Nutrition with Best Report on Children for a more robust category,” said Thiry. Justifying the reason for the new category, he said it was due to the growing usage of the new media and the need to encourage online media to engage in more robust journalism.

As those who had submitted entries look forward to the deal day, what would be on the lips of many media practitioners is, who will be the overall winner this year? Will Taiwo Alimi retain his title or will a new overall winner emerge? Alimi’s entry last year, ‘Where the blind dare to dream’ was adjudged the best report last year, making him coast home with the overall prize of a 5-week programme in London. Aside taking the overall prize on the night, his report initially clinched the Best Report on Education.

Providing some background to the award, the Managing Director of Promasidor noted that when the award was launched in 2012, it was to assess, recognize and reward excellent outstanding journalistic work based on merit, observing that the job of an average journalist is demanding particularly when the intellectual exertion and the skill that go into producing a good copy is put on the spotlight.

Thiry said, “The judges will pick one of the Category winners as the overall winner. In addition to the prize won at the Category level, The Overall Winner will be sent on an all-expense paid four-week multimedia journalism training course with Thomson Foundation in London followed by a week’s work placement with a prominent British national news organisation.

Also peaking, Head Legal/ Public Relation, Mr Andrew Enahoro said the award is not for Lagos based journalists alone, reason for the acceptance of application online.

0 Comments