All Media: Best Use of the Medium Winners

Matthew Absalom-Wong, Darren Connell, Paul McGeough, Kimberley Porteous,The Sydney Morning Herald, “The Iraq DVDs and the War of Ideas”

Through this series of multimedia reports, international correspondent Paul McGeough took readers into the violence at the heart of the Iraqi insurgency and the shocking reality of life for ordinary Iraqis as the sectarian conflicts escalates. Published on smh.com.au and theage.com.au, the Herald team made use of video and audio to give readers and viewers a glimpse inside the conflict and the ideological war being waged by Washington across Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories.

Matthew Absalom-Wong has designed and produced multimedia pieces for both The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald websites and was part of the Walkley-winning team for this category in 2004. Darren Connell has worked as a video producer with Fairfax Digital since 2000.

Paul McGeough is one of Australia’s most distinguished foreign correspondents. He has won five Walkley Awards, including the senior award for Journalism Leadership in 2003.

Kimberley Porteous worked for The Australian Financial Review and The Sydney Morning Herald before joining smh.com.au.

Judges’ comments
A valuable, accessible and ongoing resource that backed up and gave depth to news stories printed in the Herald. Both elements of the entry, together with audio and video, showed an interesting use of the media and brought a difficult story to Australian readers and viewers.