NPL scoops print media awards at 2009 NAMISA Awards

The BNL which publishes The Daily Times, Malawi News and Sunday Times scooped all the awards in last year's competition.

In the electronic category, the three-year-old radio station Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS) scooped the Best Media House of the Year (Electronic), before winning the Best Investigative Journalist of the Year Award, Human Rights Journalist of the Year Award and Best Economic Journalist Award.

The awards saw NPL sweeping up the Media House of the Year (Print) Award, Best Photojournalist of the Year Award, which went to Amos Gumulira, and Human Rights Journalist of the Year Award, which was claimed by Bright Sonani.

Sonani and Gumulira, whose pictures and stories were about a police fracas that shot down a lorry driver while driving in the city of Lilongwe and tried to cover it up by saying it was a road accident, is the one that won them the two awards as well as the Overall Winners of the Year Award.

Sonani and Maxwell Ng'ambi, both news analysts, shared the Best Economic Journalist Award in a story where they exposed how micro-finance institutions were ripping off civil servants.

Ng'ambi claimed the Investigative Journalist of the Year Award before the publications sports journalist Peter Kanjere won the Sports Journalist of the Year Award.

NPL's Frank Namangale won the inaugural Democracy and Good Governance Award while the Education Journalist of the year Award went to another NPL journalist Deogratias M'mana.

Capital Radio journalist George Mhango won the electronic version of the Democracy and Good Governance Award, Blessings Kaniche formerly of Capital Radio and now working for Malawi Broadcasting Corporation MBC won the Education Journalist of the year Award.