Changes for financial journalism award

Previously entrants received awards for outstanding work per media category – magazines, radio, television, etc – but will now receive accolades based on broader content and not for a particular reporting medium.

“The award is now in its ninth year and following deliberation with our esteemed panel of judges, we redeveloped the award to create new opportunities to reward journalists for excellence in this select field of business reporting,” says Citadel CEO Keith Betty.

“We are confident that the new award will attract even more entries than in recent years and we are excited about the possibility of enticing journalists who have not participated previously. Also, we anticipate even tougher competition than ever before between the leading journalists who have been selected winners of Citadel Words on Money awards in the past,” Betty said.

Prize money increased

The total prize money for the awards will be increased from R61 500 to R70 000.

The new categories for the awards are: breaking news; analysis and opinion; best feature; consumer education; the chairman's award for investigative journalism; newcomer of the year; and the category previously only about reporting on hedge funds has been expanded to reward coverage of issues about all alternative investments. In addition to these categories, an overall winner will be selected by the panel of judges.

The judges who assisted with the redevelopment of the award are Prem Govender, chairperson of the Financial Planning Institute (FPI); John Arnesen, chief executive of the FPI and Robert Brand of the Pearson Chair for Economics Journalism at Rhodes University.

Previous overall winners of the award are:

• 2000: Stephen Cranston, Financial Mail
  
• 2001: Bruce Cameron, Personal Finance
  
• 2002: Stafford Thomas, Financial Mail
  
• 2003: Marc Hasenfuss, Finansies & Tegniek/Finance Week (now Finweek)
  
• 2004: Alec Hogg, Moneyweb
  
• 2005: Bruce Cameron, Personal Finance
  
• 2006: Charlene Clayton, Personal Finance
  
• 2007: Bruce Cameron, Personal Finance

In 2007 Bruce Whitfield was the winner of the print category for features about bank charges written for Finweek; Steven Jones of Moneyweb was the winner of the electronic category for various features about tax matters published on the web sites of Moneyweb. Stephen Cranston of Financial Mail was the 2007 winner of the chairman's award for investigative journalism and Julius Cobbett, also of Moneyweb, the winner of the Peregrine hedge fund award.

The closing date for entries for the 2008 awards is 25 January 2008. Details are available in the ‘Press Room' at www.citadel.co.za.