Newspaper publishing awards finalists

The awards, organised by the Newspaper Association of South Africa, recognises newspaper excellence in all areas of disciplines from advertising, print and production, layout and typography, to the balance between the use of pictures and graphics. The criteria have been set by the industry to recognise publishers who excel in producing high-quality products.

A total of 16 dailies and 29 weeklies entered this year’s competition. The judging panel consisted of Clive Loxton, creative faculty head at the AAA School of Advertising; Kerry Swift - executive director of development at Rhodes University; Carmen Schaefer, graphic design lecturer at the AAA School of Advertising; and Logan Naidu, lecturer at the Cross Media Training Centre.

The finalists for the 2007 awards are:

Frewin Competition

This competition has been in existence for the past 58 years and recognises all urban daily newspapers with a circulation above 50 000:

• Beeld
  
• Daily News
  
• Daily Sun
  
• Die Burger

McCall Competition

This competition has been in existence for the past 46 years and recognises urban daily newspapers with a circulation of 50 000 or less:

• Business Day
  
• Volksblad
  
• The Mercury
  
• The Witness

Joel Mervis Competition

This competition has been in existence for the past 12 years and recognises urban weekly newspapers irrespective of their circulation:

• City Press
  
• Mail & Guardian
  
• Naweek Beeld
  
• Saturday Star

Comments Clive Loxton, convenor of judges for the three awards, “We’re moving into an era of accelerated change where the only constant will be the need to innovate. The printed word will never lose its attraction to the young who are brought up to appreciate it at an early age.

“Unfortunately, we have to recognise that this love of reading is not being cultivated. With reading, writing and spelling skills in such sharp decline, we have to acknowledge that the young will gravitate to electronic media that spoon-feed their eyes and ears effortlessly. This is the challenge – make newspapers more interesting to them – if you don’t, you ignore them at your peril.”