Caxton’s Oscar-themed internal awards evening upped the glamour factor in celebrating the achievements of staff. Hosted at Kyalami’s Theatre on the Track, it showcased over 1 500 entries received from staff members across branches.
“The reason for hosting these awards is two-fold,” says Gill Randall, joint MD of The Newspaper Advertising Bureau (NAB), Caxton’s in house sales arm. “The ongoing success of our community newspapers relies on the individual products remaining relevant to the communities they report on and secondly, we believe in rewarding staff who continually raise the excellence bar to ensure that their newspapers are precisely what their respective readers, and advertisers, are looking for.”
This year’s Newspaper Journalist of the Year went to Landé Willemse of Lowvelder. The judges accredited Lande’s versatility, thorough research, excellent writing in both English and Afrikaans and attention grabbing introductions as the underlying factors to her success.
Some of this year’s other winners are:
– Best regular column: Martin Paul of the Newcastle Advertiser
– Best Investigative journalist: Landé Willemse of Lowvelder
– Best headline writing: Cathy Grosvenor of Springs Advertiser
– Best free newspaper (24 pages or less): The Northcliff /Melville Times edited by Kennedy Mudzuli
– Best free newspaper (more than 24 pages): The Fourways Review edited by Kennedy Mudzuli
– Best sold newspaper (less than 8 000 circulation): The Ladysmith Gazette, edited by Rod Skinner.
– Best sold newspaper (more than 8 000 circulation): The South Coast Herald, edited by Colleen Haggard
– Best feature photograph: Michael Paterson of North Coast Courier with “Borat on the Beach”.
– The Best LookLocal site was awarded to LookLocal Lowveld (Mirelle Jacobs and Aliche Bezuidenhout)
– Best Get It magazine: Get It Lowveld, edited by Melanie Reeder
– The Field Salesperson of the Year award went to Catherine McPherson of Joburg North
Editorial judges for the awards include Dr Pedro Diederichs (HoD Journalism at Tshwane University of Technology); Martin Williams (editor of The Citizen); Steven Motale (executive editor, Pretoria News) and Ingrid Pepler (veteran journalist).
