SAPOA and Excellerate have once again partnered for 2019’s installment of the Property Journalism Awards for Excellence which recognise and honor South African property journalists who have made noteworthy contributions to the commercial and industrial property industry through quality media coverage.
The theme for this year’s awards is Authentic Journalism is a Good Business Practice. It is the art of taking information and adding value to it.
SAPOA Chief Executive Neil Gopal comments:
“In today’s increasingly volatile socio-economic and political world, quality journalism that is fair, accurate and unbiased, remain critical. It is less about the story and more about the layers and context of the story that need to be explored. The SAPOA Journalism Awards for Excellence are designed to applaud local media who use their words boldly to tell the truth and challenge the status quo”.
The media landscape is changing at a rapid rate. According to SAPOA Chairperson of the Journalism Awards Committee, Brian Azizollahoff, whilst presentation on different media platforms used to be important a few years ago, the key to success in media nowadays is content, irrespective of the platform on which it is featured: “Most journalists nowadays work across platforms and it is not unusual for someone considered to be a print journalist to also produce videos, audio, online and social media offerings. The SAPOA Journalism Awards for Excellence needs to keep abreast with these changes and, as such, we have revamped the criteria in each of our categories to align with this. Categories will now be content-driven as opposed to platform or aesthetics-driven.”
The awards seek to identify well-informed, researched and credibly presented in-depth reporting that makes a difference and reports objectively on the property industry. The winners of the different categories will be honoured and rewarded irrespective of the media platform in which their stories were first published.
Submissions for the awards open today and will be judged in five main categories, namely Best Newcomer of the Year, Property News Journalist of the year, Property Feature Journalist of the Year, Property Publication of the Year and Property News Website of the Year.
Entries close on Friday 22 March 2019and nominees and winners will be announced at the SAPOA Convention & Property Exhibition, taking place from 18-20 June 2019 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.
