Walkley arts journalism prizes awarded
July 1, 2019
The Walkley Foundation announced winners for this year’s suite of mid-year awards on 26 June in Sydney.
Peer-judged and selected on the basis of journalistic excellence, the Mid-Year Celebration includes two Arts Journalilsm prizes sponsored by the Copyright Agency which provides $5000 to each winner, as well as the Walkley Young Australian Journalist of the Year Awards, Industrial Reporting, Freelancer of the Year, Women’s Leadership in Media, the Our Watch Award, the inaugural Media Diversity Australia Award, the Jacoby-Walkley Scholarship with Nine, the Media Super scholarship with Seven, the William Buckland Foundation Fellowship with The Age and the Sean Dorney Grant for Pacific Journalism.
Congratulations to Jane Howard for winning the Arts Journalism Prize for her ABC Story: “How Australian theatre rebalanced its gender disparity” and Jeff Sparrow for winning the Walkley-Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism for his Sydney Review of Books piece, “A Place of Punishment: No Friend But the Mountains by Behrouz Boochani”. Jeff is also this year’s Copyright Agency Author Fellow.
Oliver Gordon was named the 2019 Young Australian Journalist of the Year for his ABC Background Briefing story “The Black & White Hotel”, an investigation into racial profiling at an Alice Springs Hotel which won the Longform Journalism category and was also a finalist for the Public Service Journalism category. Gordon wins a two-week trip to US newsrooms. The Walkley Judging Board, represented by Lenore Taylor, Claire Harvey, Stella Lauri and Heidi Murphy, found Gordon’s entry stood out amongst a strong field.
Jane Howard won the Arts Journalism Prize including $5000 from the Copyright Agency. Photo: Adam Hollingworth.