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Release Date: Friday, November 04, 2005
Type: Media Release
Subject: Student
AUT students dominate Wallace Awards with strong election coverage | | aut
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AUT University dominated the Wallace Awards for political journalism and general election coverage this year, winning six out of the nine awards on offer.
The journalism newspaper Te Waha Nui, with its special three-edition coverage of this year's general election and campaign, won the top award and a prize of $750.
The judges complimented AUT's School of Communication Studies paper on its "breadth of coverage, effective choice and use of a variety of writing styles, good design and an above-average standard of writing generally."
The awards are the benchmark for effective political coverage and this year the focus was on student journalism.
Duncan Greive and his colleagues on Te Waha Nui won the major merit prize of $500 for a portfolio of two stories, and Britton Broun (with colleague Bonnie White for one story) won the second major merit prize of $300 for a portfolio of three stories.
Miles Erwin, Rosie Cotter and Nicole Stanley also won merit awards of $100 each.
In presenting the awards Dr Helena Catt, chief executive of the Electoral Commission, sponsor of the awards, said journalists had an important role to empower the public in the election process.
Commission communications manager Peter Northcote says the media need to address why people do or don’t get involved in voting and improve their electoral coverage.
He says electoral reporting contributes to participatory democracy by giving people information that will help people assess the contenders.
Mr Northcote says if writing can make elections interesting to voters, some of the prejudices and cynicism or people’s first reactions to media election coverage can be dispelled.
He says Te Waha Nui newspaper covered a variety of issues with a good mix of harder and softer news, and was engaging.
News Production course leader Associate Professor David Robie says the success is a credit to the hard work that the Te Waha Nui editorial team had put into producing their election coverage.
"It was the first time our newspaper has covered the national elections and a lot of fine individual and team effort was put into the coverage. Many excellent and innovative creative ideas were introduced by the team and they really produced an election paper to be proud of," he said.
Te Waha Nui was launched by the School of Communication Studies in November 2003.
For details:
Associate Professor David Robie
School of Communication Studies
AUT University
Tel: (64 9) 921 9999 extn 7834
For more information please contact : Associate Professor David Robie
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