On the occasion of the 2013 Bruce Jesson lecture we announced this year’s Senior and Emerging Journalism Awards.

The Senior Journalism award of $4000 went to Alister Barry, for his feature-length film documentary, Hot Air, which tells the history of the politics of climate change in New Zealand from 1988 to 2008. Alister’s film will contribute to public debate on the politics of climate change in New Zealand from 1988 to 2008, and documenting ‘a political struggle over the burning of oil and coal which is causing the extinction of thousands of species’.

He has a track record of completing work that has generated public awareness and debate. His films as writer-director include Someone Else’s Country (1996), In a Land of Plenty (2002) and The Hollow Men (2008), the latter adapted from the book of the same name by last year’s Bruce Jesson lecturer Nicky Hager.

The Emerging Journalist award of $1000 was shared between Ruth Keber, a journalism student at Massey University, for ‘The New Maori Muslims’, North & South (March 2013) and Deena Coster, a journalism student at the Western Institute of Technology Taranaki (WITT), for a portfolio of articles in the Taranaki Daily News (June-Sept 2013).

Ruth Keber’s ‘The New Maori Muslims’, published in North & South, told the story of a young woman’s personal testimony of a flight from abuse to the embrace of Islam, then broadening into an exploration of linkages between Maori and Muslim culture and consideration of Islam and religious diversity in New Zealand.

Deena Coster’s portfolio of articles published in the Taranaki Daily News showcased a student journalist following in the tradition of the best kind of local newspaper journalism, displaying community commitment, social concern over issues like pay and housing and the initiative to dig around.

The deadline is approaching for the Bruce Jesson Foundation journalism prize competition, offering funding for high-quality critical journalism. The 2013 competition opened as recent winner Max Rashbrooke unveiled a new book supported by his Jesson award: Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis – and what we can do about it (Bridget Williams Books, 2013).

The Bruce Jesson Foundation was established in 1999 to commemorate one of New Zealand’s greatest political journalists, the late Bruce Jesson, by promoting “vigorous political, social and economic investigation, debate, analysis and reporting in New Zealand”. The Foundation holds an Annual Lecture and awards two journalism prizes, presented at the lecture in October:

• The Senior Journalism Prize is self-nominated and invites applications for an award of up to NZ$4,000 to assist a project aiming to produce the kind of critical and analytical journalism exemplified by Jesson’s work.
• The Emerging Journalism Prize has a fixed emolument of $1,000 and recognises “outstanding recent work by New Zealand print journalism students.” It is nominated by the heads of New Zealand journalism schools or journalism programme leaders for published work by student journalists.

Entries for the 2013 Bruce Jesson Journalism Prizes are now invited both from self-nominating senior journalists and the Heads of New Zealand journalism schools. Entries will be assessed by members of the Foundation’s Journalism Sub-committee: Geoff Kemp (convenor), Camille Guy, Joe Atkinson, Simon Collins, and Jon Stephenson.

Details are available by clicking the ‘Awards’ tab at the top of this page. Applications and nominations (including copies of nominated work) can be submitted online, or mailed to Dr Geoff Kemp, C/- Political Studies Department, University of Auckland, PB 92019, Auckland (g.kemp@auckland.ac.nz).

The DEADLINE for receipt of nominations is 5pm, Monday, September 30, 2013.

A planned book on the Pike River mine disaster by Christchurch journalist Rebecca Macfie has won this year’s top Bruce Jesson journalism award.

Macfie, the South Island correspondent for the Listener, has covered the Pike River story ever since 29 miners died on 19 November 2010 in New Zealand’s worst mining disaster in almost a century. Continue reading Pike River Book Wins Top Jesson Award →

The 2011 Bruce Jesson Journalism Award went to Max Rashbrooke, Wellington, for his book Across the Great Divide on inequality in NZ.

The 2011 Bruce Jesson Emerging Journalist Award went to Josh Gale, Auckland University of Technology, for a series of stories in the AUT student newspaper Te Waha Nui, and later in the New Zealand Herald, on prostitution of girls as young as 12 in central Auckland.