Great journalism shone at the 2019 Voyager Media Awards on Friday night.
Eloise Gibson from Newsroom won the SMC-sponsored Science and Technology Award at the Voyager Media Awards on Friday for her coverage on Sir Ray Avery’s plan to manufacture low-cost infant incubators and the legal threats he made to suppress studies.
Stuff’s Environment National Correspondent Charlie Mitchell won big this year, taking out the Feature Writer of the Year (long-form) and the Environmental/Sustainability Reporter of the Year for his work on snails, phosphorus, land reform, and sea-level rise. He was also named joint runner-up in the Science and Technology Award. Judges described Mitchell as “an exemplary current affairs feature writer who is original in his ideas, dogged in his research, and whose crisp writing carries the reader through in-depth, often complex stories”.
Hannah Martin from Stuff won the junior nib Health Journalism Scholarship, with the Senior award going to Catherine Hutton from RNZ. Nicholas Jones from the NZ Herald was named runner-up for the senior award for his work investigating rest homes.
New Zealand Geographic won Magazine of the Year for the third time running. In her acceptance speech, editor Rebekah White urged media companies to think about the diversity of views when hiring and that today’s short-form winners are her future stable of long-form writers. The magazine’s writers were well represented as nominees at the awards, and contributor Ellen Rykers won Best Junior Feature Writer. The judges said: “Ellen Rykers’ impressive research, craft and surprising insights delivered an entry well beyond the junior category and feature writing at its best.”
Veteran reporter Phil Pennington from RNZ was honoured with the Reporter of the Year accolade, and in true style, apparently, he stopped to do an interview on the way.
Our advisory board member and Stuff editor-in-chief Patrick Crewdson was named the Editorial Executive of the Year and also received the prestigious Wolfson Fellowship, which provides for 10 weeks’ study at Cambridge University’s Wolfson College.