Journalism awards

ABC dominates SA/NT Rural Media and Communicators awards

Kristy O’Brien from the Darwin newsroom was named Rural Journalist of the Year and Best Rural Broadcast Journalist for audio/radio and for video/television at the 2024 Rural Media and Communicators SA/NT awards.

The ABC dominated at the Rural Media and Communicators SA/NT awards on Friday, with Kristy O’Brien from the Darwin newsroom named Rural Journalist of the Year.

O’Brien was also Best Rural Broadcast Journalist for audio/radio and for video/television.

ABC Riverland Rural reporter Eliza Berlage was named Best Rural Broadcast Journalist for digital/online; Broken Hill news reporter Bill Ormonde Best Rural/Regional Photojournalist; and Adelaide cinematographer Tony Hill won the Best Rural Photographer Award – Nature/Landscape/Rural Scenes.

Full list of ABC winners and highly commended:

JOURNALISM

2024 Rural Journalist of the Year

Winner: Kristy O’Brien, ABC NT

2024 Best Rural Broadcast Journalist – Audio / Radio

Winner: Kristy O’Brien, ABC NT

2024 Best Rural Broadcast Journalist – Video / Television

Winner: Kristy O’Brien, ABC NT

2024 Best Rural Broadcast Journalist – Digital / Online

Winner: Eliza Berlage, ABC Riverland

Highly commended: Bill Ormonde, ABC Broken Hill

PHOTOGRAPHY

2024 Best Rural Photographer Award – Nature/Landscape/Rural Scenes

Winner: Tony Hill, ABC TV

Best single photograph: Tony Hill, ABC TV

2024 Best Rural/Regional Photo Journalist Award

Winner: Bill Ormonde, ABC

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Quills now open, featuring new international reporting award

A new national award recognising the achievements of a pioneering female Australian journalist will be the centrepiece of the 30th anniversary Quill Awards celebration in March.

The new award, for international reporting, is named after Jana Wendt, one of Australia’s most respected journalists, whose significant career was built on a deep understanding of national and international issues, combined with an astute and insightful interviewing style. She worked for Australia’s three commercial television networks and SBS, frequently travelling overseas to report on international stories with global audiences.

Melbourne Press Club president Michael Bachelard said: “This award is a significant update to the Quills. Journalism conducted outside Australia’s borders is crucial to our understanding of the world, and I’m delighted that the Melbourne Press Club has elected to name it after one of Australia’s best-known journalists, Jana Wendt.’’

“I hope this award encourages our newsrooms to look beyond the immediate horizon and rewards the journalists who do this important work.’’

The Jana Wendt Award for International Reporting joins the Melbourne Press Club’s other national awards – the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of The Year award and the Harry Gordon Australian Sports Journalist of The Year award.

The new award will be supported for the next three years by Qantas Group.

Qantas International CEO Cam Wallace said great journalism was central to Australia’s place in the world and in communicating a deeper understanding of what was happening around the globe.

Jana Wendt expressed her gratitude at being associated with the new award.

“I am delighted that the Quills have chosen to establish a special award recognising the work of journalists reporting from beyond Australia’s borders,’’ she said.

“A foreign story makes high demands of the storyteller—and not only because the task is to bring to life the unfamiliar for a home audience. The work can be both thrilling and enervating. The practical job of navigating foreign environments and bureaucracies demands patience, vigilance, and savvy. For reporters in conflict zones, the risks are acute. But the journalist’s core challenge, always, is to deepen our understanding of the world.

“I am very grateful, and humbled, that the Melbourne Press Club has granted me the honour of association with this significant new award.’’

The announcement of the new award also marks the formal opening of the Quill Awards, with the presentation ceremony for the 30th anniversary event to be at Melbourne’s Crown Palladium on Friday, March 21.

The Press Club consulted members and its board to identify a journalist with a reputation for international reporting whose name would grace the award, and Jana emerged as the leading candidate. Jana is already a member of the Australian Media Hall of Fame.

Cam Wallace said that with Qantas operating flights to 34 international destinations on every inhabited continent, there were few major global events that did not impact the business in some way.

“Whether its conflict in Ukraine or the Middle East impacting global aviation, knowing what is happening in the world around us is key to our ability to safely connect Australia to the world,’’ he said.

“Great journalism is central to that. It gives us a deeper understanding of what’s happening around us, and Australia’s place in the world. That’s why we’re very proud to be the inaugural sponsor of the Jana Wendt Award for International Reporting to help recognise and celebrate the best of Australian journalism.”

This award carries an $8,000 prize.

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2024 Australian Sports Commission Media Awards

Full list of winners

Best coverage of sport for people with disability
Elizabeth Wright, ABC Sport
Highly Commended: Zachary Gates, Wide World of Sports

Best sports documentary
Came From Nowhere, SBS

Best coverage of rural and regional sport
James Gardiner, Newcastle Herald: ‘Newcastle Jets - a turbulent year for Newcastle’s flagship football side’
Highly Commended: Jeremy Story Carter, ABC: ‘Wahgunyah, undefeated’

Best depiction of inclusive sport
That Pacific Sports Show, ABC

Best coverage of sport by a club or organisation
Surfing Australia, 2024 Australian Boardriders Battle

Best sport profile – written
Kirby Short, Cricket Australia: ‘Comes in waves, the fall and rise of Josie Dooley’

Best reporting of an issue in sport
Julian Linden, News Corp: ‘China’s secret doping cover-up’
Highly commended: Michael Warner, News Corp ‘White Line Fever’

Best sport podcast
The Final Word Cricket Podcast, Adam Collins and Geoff Lemon

Best coverage of a sporting event - JOINT WINNERS
Nine Network, Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games
News Corp, Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games

Best sports photography
Delly Carr, Jess Fox celebrates Noèmie Fox’s win

Best sport coverage by an individual – broadcast
Corbin Middlemas, ABC Sport

Best sport coverage by an individual – written
Will Swanton, The Australian

Rising Star Award
Ellie Cole, Nine Network

Nominations for the 30th Quill Awards were announced yesterday. The awards dinner will be held in Melbourne on March 21.


The Walkley’s midyear celebration of journalism, which has been renamed the Mid-Year Media Prizes, has quietly dumped the award for industrial relations reporting. So quietly that there was no mention of the change in the press release or on the website. But it did not go unnoticed by the journalists who were lining up to enter.

It’s a strange move given the Gold Walkley won by Nine Entertainment in November was an IR story.

The Building Bad investigation saw a team of journalists across the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review and 60 Minutes expose allegations of criminal and corrupt conduct in the CFMEU, resulting in the union being placed into administration.

The Building Bad Team is Nick McKenzie, David Marin-Guzman, Ben Schneiders, Garry McNab, Amelia Ballinger and Reid Butler.

Schneiders, who has won the IR award four times, has left the Age and now works for the ABC’s Four Corners.

Last year’s midyear IR category was won by the Australian’s Ewin Hannan, another prolific and award-winning IR reporter.

Schneiders, an investigative reporter who was a specialist IR roundsman at the Age between 2007 and 2011, told Weekly Beast it was a shortsighted and deeply disappointing decision.

Half the Walkley Foundation board members have resigned amid a spectacular falling out between the media union and the annual journalism awards, the Walkleys.

The three Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance board directors – Karen Percy, Erin Delahunty and Kate Ferguson – have also resigned their elected positions in the union, as president and vice-presidents respectively.

According to confidential documents seen by Weekly Beast, there has been tension simmering for more than a year about a proposal to amend the foundation’s constitution to require that a majority of the board be independent and not union officials.

The Walkley Foundation chief executive, Shona Martyn, confirmed that Percy and Delahunty had resigned but said the MEAA had not informed her about Ferguson.

The MEAA’s national media section has been concerned about a lack of communication between the foundation and the union, which have joint responsibility for the awards.

The Walkley Foundation directors Adele Ferguson, Victoria Laurie and Sally Neighbour wrote to the MEAA pushing for urgent change but were rebuffed.