2023 Our Watch Award winner: Richard Willingham
Richard Willingham has been ABC’s senior Victorian Political Reporter since 2017. He was previously a political reporter at The Age. As well as political reporting, Richard often works on investigative projects as well as being a regular political analyst on ABC digital and on ABC radio.
The Our Watch Award is administered by The Walkley Foundation on behalf of Our Watch.
2023 Entries have closed. Finalists will be announced on May 25. The winners will be announced at the Mid-Year Celebration of Journalism on June 15.
The Our Watch Award for excellence in reporting on violence against women and children recognises the work of an individual, team or news organisation in highlighting the drivers of gendered violence and the way these intersect with other forms of discrimination and abuse faced by victims.
Eligible formats include rolling coverage or a series of news reports or features, or one longform piece. Entries can be examples of journalism of any medium (text, audio or visual) and published on any platform (print, broadcast, podcast and digital).
Entries must demonstrate how the reporting was realised and how intersecting forms of discrimination were considered and represented in it and provide evidence of its impact.
Judging will take into account deadlines, resourcing and other pressures faced by the entrant/s, as well as ongoing reactions to the work, or social or legislative outcomes arising from it.
Judges will evaluate submissions according to the following criteria:
Judges will also take into consideration isolation or exposure to outside forces, as well as the real or potential dangers in presenting a story.
Entry into the Our Watch Award is based on independent acts of journalism, free from any commercial or corporate interests.
Entries may be either a single piece of work or may consist of up to three pieces that represent a body of work.
Each entry to the Mid-Year Celebration of Journalism is judged on how well it responds to:
Please note the Our Watch Award is subject to its own judging criteria (detailed above).
For more information on how judging works, including the overall judging criteria that the other Mid-Year awards are subjected to, please refer to the FAQs
Your entry must comply with the following Terms & Conditions
Entry is free for members of MEAA. The cost of entering the award for non-members is $50 including GST. For inquiries about MEAA membership, please contact members@meaa.org or call 1300 656 513.
Our Watch has been recognising and rewarding excellence in reporting on violence against women and children since 2013, initially through the Our Watch Awards – administered by the Walkley Foundation – and from 2019 onwards through the Our Watch Award at the Walkley Mid-Year Celebration.
The objective of Our Watch’s ongoing work with the Walkley Foundation is to improve the quality of reporting on violence against women and their children by building awareness of gender inequality as a key driver of this violence.
More information on the Our Watch Awards, including previous finalists and winners, can be found here.
Australia’s first awards recognising reporting on gendered violence were established by Domestic Violence Victoria. It is only thanks to the devoted and prolonged efforts of DV Vic and others in the sector that a place for this award exists today.
2022 Winner
The winners of the 2022 Our Watch Award were Bethany Atkinson-Quinton and Madison Griffiths for Broadwave, “Tender: Roia Atmar” published on Broadwave Pods
2021 Winner
The winner of the 2021 Our Watch Award was Samantha Maiden for “Young staffer Brittany Higgins says she was raped at Parliament House” “Parliament office ‘steam cleaned’ after alleged attack” and “Minister Michaelia Cash’s voicemail message to Brittany Higgins” published in News.com.au
2020 Winner
The winner of the 2020 Our Watch Award was Nina Funnell for the “Let Her Speak” series of articles, published in News.com.au, The Mercury and NT News.
2019 Winner
The winners of the 2019 Our Watch Award were Sarah Dingle and the Background Briefing Team, Radio National, ABC for “Australia On Trial: Carers who kill, Slavery in the suburbs, Murder on Trial”
Deborah Morris
Public Affairs and Media Manager
deborah.morris@ourwatch.org.au / 0450 784 847
