News for Journalists – Gold Standard of Investigative Reporting:
In the PR World we have a ‘difficult to define’ relationship with journalists – we hate it when they don’t publish our puff pieces and love them to bits when they do.
In any event journalism as an industry is under threat and it is behove upon us as PR Professionals to support and promote the journalism industry upon which we rely more than we will admit.
So, MYPR does a weekly feature on journalists along with giving journalists the OPTION to promote their work via a FREE FEATURED JOURNALIST SUBMISSION on MyPR of their latest article – we are not asking the journalist to just post a few sentences or paragraphs but also to give a personal narrative about their article and why they wrote it.
That submission form is at the bottom of this article or can be found HERE.
In addition to the above MyPR also has a dedicated section where journalists can request the help of an expert.
These articles about journalists popped up this past week:
Journalism Awards:
‘Nation’ wins again as Pauline Ongaji bags June Biedler prize for cancer journalism: Last year, the prize was won by Nation’s Health reporter Hellen Shikanda, who became the first journalist from an Africa-based media outlet to receive this honour. The AACR June L. Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism aims to highlight the vital role of the media in informing the public about cancer and advances in cancer research.
Stella prize 2025: shortlist entirely women of colour for the first time in award’s history: Stella prize 2025: shortlist entirely women of colour for the first time in award’s history. Michelle de Kretser and journalist Amy McQuire among six authors in contention for $ 60,000 prize for women and non-binary writers.
Compelling story on artisanal fishers in Greenland wins IFAD-sponsored ‘Rural Voices’ Mobile Journalism Award: A gripping mobile report capturing the daily struggles and resilience of two artisanal fishers in Greenland has won the Rural Voices Mobile Journalism Award, sponsored by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The winning story, Fishing Among Icebergs, was produced, shot and edited by Spanish journalist Leonor Suárez, from the Radiotelevisión del Principado de Asturias (RTPA).
Finalists Announced for 2025 Literary Awards : PEN America today announced the finalists—literary legends and new voices spanning 11 genres— for its 2025 Literary Awards. The award ceremony on Thursday evening May 8—called the “Oscars for books”—will be hosted in New York City by two-time Emmy award-winning television host, journalist, and bestselling author Tamron Hall. PEN America will honor three writers for career achievement: Mozambican author Mia Couto will receive the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature; Lebanese American playwright Mona Mansour will be honored with the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award, and Charles H. Rowell, founder of Callaloo, a journal celebrating writers and visual artists of African descent worldwide, the PEN/Nora Magid Award for Magazine Editing.
NZME celebrates more than 130 nominations at Voyager Media Awards, NZ Radio and Podcast Awards: NZME is celebrating more than 130 nominations at the Voyager Media Awards and the New Zealand Radio and Podcast Awards. The company – which owns the New Zealand Herald and seven regional mastheads – received 28 nominations at the Voyager Media Awards, including for digital news provider of the year (nzherald.co.nz) and for the weekly newspaper of the year (Weekend Herald, Herald on Sunday) and regional newspaper of the year (Hawke’s Bay Today, Rotorua Daily Post).
Alphonse Pierre Wins 2025 ASME Next Award: Pitchfork is proud to announce that Senior Writer Alphonse Pierre has been chosen as a 2025 ASME Next Award honoree by the American Society of Magazine Editors, as part of the 2025 National Magazine Awards. The organization’s description of the ASME Next award is as follows: “The awards honor outstanding achievement by early-career journalists. Any full-time or freelance writer, photographer, editor, social-media journalist, designer or photo editor is eligible for nomination. Five award winners are chosen each year and receive medals bearing the likeness of Alexander Calder’s Elephant Walking.”
Gold standard of South African investigative reporting honoured at 2025 Taco Kuiper Awards: Sikonathi Mantshantsha of News24 takes top honours at the 2025 Taco Kuiper Award for Investigative Journalism with his powerful series “Waste Land”, exposing the dismal state of municipal sewage and sanitation infrastructure in the Mogale City Local Municipality and the indignity suffered by people living in the area. The Taco Kuiper Awards recognise excellence in investigative journalism in South Africa and has been hosted by the Wits Centre for Journalism for the last 19 years.
Tough Times Ahead:
An open letter from Journalism Faculty to our students: We stand with you: President Donald J. Trump is attacking and dismantling the First Amendment’s press freedoms and principles that are essential to democracy. As guardians of that freedom, we, the Journalism faculty at American University, are obligated to name this clear and present danger. Our duty to you requires us to unequivocally renounce these attacks on the free press. We must lift your gaze and inspire your actions toward higher principles in journalism and its essential role of telling the hard truths that make a better world.
We are Family: In a moment that captured attention ahead of the 10th season ..
Good Reporting amid Troubled Times for Journalists: A Gallup survey last month showed seven in ten people had zero or little trust in mass media to report news “fully, accurately, and fairly.” Good polling data on evangelical views of journalism is hard to find, but a survey last year by George Mason University and The Washington Post showed that only 13 percent of self-defined “white evangelical Protestants” in six swing states trusted journalists to be fair reporting on politics. The rest did not.
Poilievre calls journalist ‘a protester’ while they try to ask him a question: A journalist shouted a question at Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre during a campaign stop in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., on Wednesday. The journalist was not on the list of people allotted a question, which the Conservative Party limits to four per day. Poilievre had been asked previously by another reporter about donations the Conservatives received from groups associated with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s political party.
Challenging times ahead if the DUP is spooked by the TUV: Is the DUP opposition to the creation of a climate commissioner’s office smart politics or a glimpse of a more cynical strategy?
Sowetan’s rich legacy demands a bold defence for truth in a rapidly changing media landscape: It is difficult times because the industry is under threat: predictions of the demise of this noble craft no longer appear far-fetched. The technological advancements are posing a serious threat to the media industry. Social media is becoming the main source of news for a growing number of global citizens. Pundits predict that the physical newspaper, as you know it, will soon be extinct. Why buy a newspaper when your Facebook friends or X followers can tell you what’s happening in the world? Why read when your neighbour and his friends host a podcast where they discuss everything under the sun?
Journalism leaders ponder the industry’s “difficult times”: Seventy-nine days into a presidential administration that has brought significant challenges to journalism, a group of local leaders in the field convened at USC Annenberg for a conversation on its current state. “There are new threats almost weekly or even sometimes daily,” said Julie Patel Liss, the president of the Asian American Journalists Association’s Los Angeles chapter and the head of the journalism program at California State University, Los Angeles. The new Trump administration has already been rocky for the media. President Donald Trump removed the Associated Press’s access to White House proceedings because they refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” and only reversed course Tuesday after a judge’s orders.
Journalists Under Threat:
Palestinian journalist killed in Israeli strike, medics say: GAZA/CAIRO, April 7 (Reuters) – A Palestinian journalist was killed on Monday and nine others were wounded, some critically, when an Israeli air strike hit a tent used by local media in southern Gaza, medics and the local journalists’ union said.
Footage showed people trying to douse flames in the tent, inside the compound of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, during the early hours of Monday.
Reuters was able to verify the video from the position, layout and design of nearby buildings and tents. The date could be verified by media reports and corroborating videos.
Google warns SA media revenue fight will hurt investment: Google responded to the Competition Commission’s Media and Digital Platforms Market Inquiry by saying it ‘misses the point’.
Charles Murito, Google’s regional director for government affairs and public policy in sub-Saharan Africa, recently argued in a strongly worded op-ed that the Competition Commission’s approach “seeks to resurrect outdated business models” and fails to recognise how consumer behaviour has fundamentally changed.
IDC Challenges Court Order Preventing It From Interviewing Whistleblowers: The Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa (IDC) has launched an urgent application to join court proceedings through which a journalist and three “whistleblowers” have been gagged from making “defamatory” allegations against solar panel company ARTsolar.
These allegations — that ARTsolar falsely claimed to be locally manufacturing solar panels when in fact they were being imported from China — had allegedly been made by a client of ARTsolar, Brett Latimer, and two former employees, Kandace Singh and Shalendra Hansraj. Journalist Bongani Hans had sent questions to ARTsolar about the allegations.
‘Don’t speak, don’t film’: It was early morning on 23 March when the police came to Yasin Akgul’s door in Istanbul – while his children were still in bed. Just hours before, the Turkish photojournalist had returned home from covering mass anti-government protests. Now he was a wanted man. “I went to the door and saw there was a lot of police,” he says. “They said they had an arrest order for me but gave me no details. My son was awake, and I couldn’t even tell him what was happening as I didn’t get it myself.” Akgul, 35, has seen “plenty of action” in more than a decade as a photojournalist with the AFP news agency – from war-torn Syria to IS-controlled Iraq. On home soil in Turkey, he has been beaten by the police several times while taking pictures, he says – including on World Peace Day – and has been detained “so many times”. But being arrested at home was a first…
IDF hits terrorist posing as journalist : Israeli forces targeted a Hamas operative early Monday near Khan Younis in southern Gaza who they say masqueraded as a journalist and participated in the October 7 massacre. The man, Hassan Aslih, survived the strike, which the IDF and Shin Bet security agency said was aimed at eliminating a key figure in the Khan Younis Brigade of Hamas who exploited media credentials to aid and broadcast the assault.
Meet three Afghans at risk of deportation from Pakistan: The Pakistan government is pushing forward with its plans to arbitrarily and forcibly expel Afghan nationals, including refugees and asylum seekers, as part of the opaque ‘Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan’ which adds to the plight of at-risk Afghans. Between September 2023 and February 2025, at least 844,499 Afghan nationals have been forced to return back to Afghanistan where they are at real risk of human rights violations by the Taliban amid worsening humanitarian crisis.
How the powerful are using lawsuit threats to silence media and ‘Murder the Truth’: The right to free speech is almost synonymous with the right to a free press for some Americans, but not always. In recent years, President Trump has called for nearly every major American TV news network to be punished in reaction to interview questions or coverage he dislikes. “Because they are crooked. They’re dishonest. And frankly they should have their licenses…taken away,” Trump said to a crowd in New Hampshire during his 2024 campaign.
The High Cost of Investigative Journalism in North Africa: Moroccan journalist Soulaimane Raissouni was arrested outside his home in Rabat, Morocco’s capital city, in May 2020. The editor-in-chief of the newspaper Akhbar Al Yaoum had long been a thorn in the side of the Moroccan authorities, publishing investigations into corruption and state repression — such as a salary bonuses scandal involving the country’s finance minister and the treasurer general. “We are under attack, but we are not defeated. Journalism is evolving, and we will find ways to keep telling the stories that matter.” — Walid Mejri, Alqatiba editor-in-chief
Accolades for Journalists:
Zee 24 TAAS honoured by TV Journalist Association for Editorial Brilliance: In a proud and powerful moment for Indian journalism, Zee 24 TAAS was honoured with multiple prestigious awards by the Television Journalist Association, Maharashtra, in recognition of the channel’s relentless pursuit of truth, fearless reporting, and commitment to public interest journalism. At a time when the role of the media is being redefined every day, Zee 24 TAAS has stood tall—unapologetically bold, fiercely independent, and deeply rooted in facts. This unwavering journalistic spirit was celebrated with the channel winning accolades across key categories:
St Mary’s Student Wins NCTJ Student Sports Journalism Award: Evie Ashton, a recent graduate of Sports Journalism MA at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, has won the NCTJ Student Sports Journalism Award, recognising her as a promising and emerging talent in the field. The National Council for the Training Journalist (NCTJ) Awards for Excellence recognises young journalists making an impact through their coverage of pressing social issues, global events, and local stories. Evie’s winning article, which delves into Olympic swimmer, James Guy’s, late ADHD diagnosis and his experience with health anxiety, earned high praise for its insightful approach to mental health in sport.
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