Irish Examiner scoops awards for design and sports coverage
The Irish Examiner received the award for Best Design and Presentation and sports writer, Kieran Shannon was named NNI Sports Journalist of the Year.
The citation for the Irish Examiner’s award for Best Design and Presentation described the newspaper’s front pages covering such events as the Cloyne Report, Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Ireland and the EU/IMF bailout as “classic and traditional but also very, very bold and memorable.”
“It seemed to me they were the perfect balance between attracting casual readers and preserving the newspaper’s traditional identity,” said judge, Mike Gilson, editor of the Belfast Telegraph.
In particular, Mr Gilson said the newspaper’s front-page treatment of the Cloyne Report was “compelling.” “These pages were a powerful reminder of the power newspapers still have in our ever-changing media landscape,” he added.
The award for design was accepted by Irish Examiner Production Editor Mark Evans.
Kieran Shannon won the award for Sports Journalist of the Year for a series of feature-length articles including a profile of former Munster rugby star, Alan Quinlan.
The citations for Kieran’s prize said he had produced a body of work “that goes beyond the usual blow-by-blow accounts of sporting fare.”
“Instead, he gives us a fascinating insight into the off-field world inhabited by our sporting stars: their hopes, their fears, they very human qualities. If sport at the highest level is a micro-drama of daily life as we know it, then our sports writer of the year has captured that world in all its glorious complexities.”
“His writing is as intuitive as it is eloquent, as compelling as it is entertaining,” read the citation.
Irish Examiner columnist, Colette Browne was named Regional Journalist of the Year for her work with the Wexford Echo newspaper.
Irish Examiner reporter, Noel Baker received a nomination for National Journalist of the Year, while the newspaper’s political correspondent, Shaun Connolly was short-listed for the Political Journalist of the Year title.
The Irish Times’ finance correspondent, Simon Carswell was named National Journalist of the Year for his reporting of the banking crisis and the bank guarantee.
Other winners were Fiach Kelly of the Irish Independent (Young Journalist); Kathy Sheridan of the Irish Times (Feature Writer); Tom Lyons and Brian Carey of the Sunday Times (Business and Economics Journalist); Miriam Lord of The Irish Times (Political Journalist) and Martina Devlin of the Irish Independent (Columnist/ Commentator).
Awards also went to Patrick Freyne of the Evening Herald and Sunday Tribune (Critic); Jennifer O’Brien (Showbiz Story of the Year) and the Wexford People group (Newspapers in Education).
The Irish Daily Mail’s Senan Molony won the prize for Scoop of the Year for his story on Michael Healy-Rae’s role in a reality TV phone voting scandal.
A special NNI Award for outstanding contribution to the newspaper industry was made to the former editor of The Irish Times, Geraldine Kennedy.
Special guests in attendance included Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte and former editor of the London Independent, Simon Kelner.
