Sanlam, MDDA honour grassroots media

The awards, handed out late last week, honoured excellence in the following sub sectors/categories of the grassroots media.

• Community Media
• Small Commercial Media (SMME)
• Corporate Owned Local Media

This year, 150 local community newspapers and community radio stations, including one from Namibia, participated. There were 970 individual entries in typography, writing, photography and 29 entries for the radio categories (Best Community Radio Station, Broadcasting in Indigenous Languages, In-depth News Coverage and Current Affairs and in Investigative Journalism). More than 1 000 photographs and over 25 radio programmes were also assessed individually. This makes the competition one of the largest of the 32 community/grassroots competitions held in South Africa annually.

Highlights

Print

• Journalist of the Year - Desireé Rorke of Lowvelder, Nelspruit, achieving the distinction of becoming the first journalist to win this award two years in succession
• Hard News - Daleen Naudé (Middelburg Observer)
• The Alet Roux Medal of Honour for the "best newcomer" - Carmen Le Roux Krige of Cape Community Newspapers' Tygertalk
• Jannie du Plessis of the Weslander - Photographer of the Year award
• News Photography category - Claudine Senekal of Ladysmith Herald, last year's Photographer of the Year
• Privately-owned newspapers - Lowvelder (paid newspapers) and Tygerburger Goodwood (free newspapers)
• Small independent (paid) newspapers - Polokwane Observer (established), The Month (upcoming) and Zithethele (grassroots)
• Front Pages category - Lowvelder, Tygerburger, Eastern Cape Today, Polokwane Observer and EzaKwaZulu News

Broadcast

• Best Community Radio Station award - Maputaland Community Radio based in rural northern KwaZulu-Natal
• In-depth News and Current Affairs - Tobile Ximba of Good News Community Radio, a community of interest radio station in KwaZulu-Natal

View the complete list of winners here.