The review of the Walkley Awards was commissioned by the Trustees last year to ensure their relevance. The previous review was some ten years ago and the media landscape has certainly evolved since then.
The Review was led by Paul Bailey, current chair and Quentin Dempster, incoming chair of the Walkley Advisory Board and consultation was requested through the media alliance e-bulletins, The Walkley Magazine- Inside the Media, press releases directly into newsrooms, the Walkley website and mention was made in The Australian Media Section.
Extensive discussions were held nationally with editors, producers and journalists either through face to face meetings or phone conversations and 50 written submissions were sent directly to the Foundation. Dialogue focused on the key areas of judging, award categories and eligibility.
Says Quentin Dempster:
Through the limitless capacity of cyberspace, journalism is rapidly changing. Broadcasting is morphing into cybercasting. Print is turning into digital text, instantly accessible around the world. The knowledge archive, through text, video and audio, is universal and vast.
In the context of the digital revolution, the trustees of the Walkley Awards asked Paul Bailey (the then chair of the Walkley Board) and myself to review the awards to make sure they remain relevant and to help establish journalism for the future as a professional skill and practice of great value in society.
Tom Burton conducted a review on behalf of the trustees 10 years ago and, ever since, the awards have been attracting more support and growing strongly in stature. But the digital revolution is driving fundamental change to the public’s conception of journalism. Indeed, anyone with a camera phone or a blog site may well call him or herself a journalist.
We all know, however, that the practice of professional journalism involves a combination of applied skills and values, high ethical standards, speed, resourcefulness, determination, commitment and courage.
In reviewing the Walkley Awards’ categories, judging and eligibility criteria, we considered 50 written submissions and conducted face-to-face and tele-conference discussions with industry leaders, journalists, photographers and artists, editors and producers.
We have concluded that radical changes are needed to the Walkley Awards and want to engage all journalists in a discussion about the exact shape of those changes. We need to talk more about the skills required in the practice of journalism.
Instead of categories which currently separate awards into individual delivery platforms – print, radio, television and online – the trustees will strive to build new categories based on the skills and values fundamental to the craft of journalism: reporting, writing, interviewing, investigating, analysis, commentating, editing, headline writing, producing, designing, presenting, documentary making, cinematography, photography, cartooning, illustration, speed and resourcefulness, courage and leadership.
Someone suggested “researching” should be added as a journalistic skill. Good idea. Research involves more than clicking on Google or Wikipedia.
Over time, these skills categories could become “branded” and therefore more valuable to both the journalist and the public which has a clear stake in quality journalism. New category awards could become known, for example, as “the 2011 Walkley Award for reporting” or “Best Reporter 2011”. The board is also investigating the possibility of an award for documentary film-making.
Subject to a broad consensus for these changes, we will have to decide when the time is right to make them. The changes we have already made to the awards for 2009 primarily are designed to simplify the awards, but also to recognise the growing importance of online journalism.
“Radio News” and “Radio Current Affairs Reporting” have been combined into a single “Radio News & Current Affairs Reporting” category.
The numbers of radio entries are small compared with other media, and the retreat from journalism by commercial radio limits the source of entries to the ABC. Combining these categories will make for more competition.
“All Media International Reporting” has absorbed the “All Media Coverage of the Asia-Pacific Region” category.
While there was a need to encourage more resources for the coverage of Asia when this award was introduced in 1997, today this is no longer the case. There was also a lot of overlap between the International and Asia-Pacific categories that this change will prevent.
A new category, “All Media – Outstanding Continuous Coverage of an Issue or Event”, will replace “All Media – Best Use of the Media”.
“Best Use” came in for criticism in recent years for the poor definition of its purpose. It was introduced to recognise the burgeoning area of online journalism. An all-media award for continuous coverage will allow media outlets to showcase all their resources and expertise to show the depth and diversity of their coverage.
“All Media Sport Feature” will be absorbed into the “All Media Best Sport Journalism” category.
Our rationale for this was that great sports feature stories could also compete strongly in numerous other categories. For example, last year Greg Baum took out the “All Media Commentary, Analysis, Opinion & Critique” category with a series of sport opinion columns.
A new category, “All Media Best Scoop of the Year”, will be introduced
to recognise the growing significance of breaking stories for competitive journalists without sacrificing accuracy. Open to all media, we think this category will be particularly appropriate for the timely work of online media.
Another new category will be introduced to recognise “Best Online Journalism”.
The Walkley Awards must encourage, promote and seek to benchmark excellence online. This online award will lead the way in integrating online reporting into the mainstream.
In line with the Walkleys’ ethos of encouraging excellence in journalism wherever it is practised, the Walkley Awards are peer judged. Each year, around 100 judges are recruited, and without their generous contribution the awards would not be possible. Judges are selected for each category with the approval of the Walkley Advisory Board, and judging panels are structured to ensure a balance of media organisations, gender, medium (for the all media categories) and geographic diversity.
The clear objective of the Walkley Awards, right from their inception in 1956, has been to recognise excellence in journalism and to inspire higher standards across the field. The acknowledged strength of the awards is that nominations are self-selected and submitted for rigorous peer review. A peer-selected award winner knows that his or her work has been judged to be exceptional.
The Walkleys must be vigilant to ensure the judging structure remains transparent and balanced. But we concluded that the current arrangements should remain in place, with more information about judging to be made available online. You can read the judges’ criteria and briefings.
Since 1997, the Walkley Awards have been open to all journalists regardless of Alliance membership. Non-members are charged an entry fee while the Alliance covers the entry costs for its financial members as a benefit of membership. This system is common with other industry awards, where employers often subsidise their employees’ application fees. There is a strong argument that entrants should at least partially contribute to the cost of administration and judging of the awards – the Media Alliance continues to make the largest financial contribution to the awards on behalf of members.
Another issue of eligibility that was raised concerned exactly what constitutes “Australian media” today. With global media boundaries merging, should we accept entries from foreign media broadcast or published in Australia? The review concluded that an eligible entrant should be classified as a citizen or resident of Australia whose material was broadcast or published in Australia.
A bona-fide journalist should be construed as “employed either freelance or full-time and be paid for their work”. Entrants must decide prior to entering which story they wish to be associated with and remain with it. Supporting statements will be increased from 200 words to 400 words to allow entrants to express more context and justification for their entry.
In any category, three samples of work in each entry are more than sufficient to capture the calibre of the entrant’s work. The sheer volume of entries is already a huge workload for our judges.
This year, we will introduce a streamlined entry process with an online registration system. All the best for the 54th Walkley Awards. I just wish I could be in the running this year – the Gold Walkley winner will receive a return business class trip for two anywhere QANTAS flies internationally, with five-star luxury accommodation thanks to Kiwi Collection.
Quentin Dempster is the current chair of the Walkley Advisory Board. He presents Stateline NSW on ABC TV.
