Newspapers hold their own in top national competition

Date: 02 July 2018 By: Andries van Zyl

The Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror again showed that they are more than able to hold their own by walking away with several top awards during the annual Forum of Community Journalist’s awards evening in Pretoria on 29 June.

The awards evening boasts an illustrious history spanning more than two decades during which it cemented itself as the top awards evening for community or local newspaper in South Africa. It is widely known as the “Oscars” of the community press, which was also the theme of this year’s ceremony.

“There has been an increase of about 20% in the number of entries for the 2017 awards, compared to the 2016 awards. About 130 journalists from more than 80 local newspaper, in all nine provinces, entered this year,” said Fanie Groenewald, the convenor of judges. He added that the judges’ overall impression was that local newspapers are still very much alive in South Africa. “They are indeed serving their communities very well,” said Groenewald.

The Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror, as part of the Zoutnet group of newspapers, were again no strangers to the podium. In the category Independent Commercial Newspapers, the Zoutpansberger scooped up a second place, while the Limpopo Mirror was in a close third. The overall winner of the category was The Village News from Hermanus. The Zoutpansberger also managed to scoop up a third place in the Best Front Page category for Independent Commercial Newspapers.

The top award of the evening for both newspapers, however, went to editor and owner Anton van Zyl. He was crowned Investigative Journalists of the Year, a very tough category to clinch. Upon receiving his award, the judges remarked that Anton went to great lengths to investigate what happened to the Lotto money allocated to a Vhembe NGO. “What he uncovered was ‘a tale that included a music festival, dietary training workshops and a system where the real beneficiaries are not always mentioned.’ He also found ‘a system that is as transparent as a toilet window.’ The story had some further developments with documents being leaked to the Zoutpansberger about irregularities within the National Lotteries Commission.”

This year, Zoutpansberger colleague Andries van Zyl managed a fourth place in the Investigative Journalist of the Year category. He also scooped up an overall third place in the highly contested Human Interest category, while receiving a Top 10 finish in the Hard News category and prestigious Journalist of the Year category.

The Zoutpansberger’s colleagues from sister publication the Limpopo Mirror also did exceptionally well. Although Andries secured a Top 10 finish in the fiercely contested Hard News category it was the Mirror’s Elmon Tshikhudo who this year out did the “local competition” by receiving an overall third place nationally in this category. Another fellow Limpopo Mirror Journalists in the running this year was Tshifhiwa Mukwevho who also manged an impressive Top 10 position in the Human Interest category.

As for the photography categories, former Zoutnet employee Isabel Venter also featured under the top names nationally and made the Zoutnet group of newspapers proud. Her top award for the evening was a well-deserved overall third place in the Photographer of the Year category. She also boasted several Top 10 finishes, including being 5^th in the News category, 6^th in the Sport category and 7^th in the General category. Isabel left to newspaper group in June after she accepted a position at Netwerk24 in Gauteng.

Overall, the Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror did exceptionally well in the competition with 14 mentions in the different categories. These included podium places and Top 10 nominations.

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Andries van Zyl

Andries joined the Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror in April 1993 as a darkroom assistant. Within a couple of months he moved over to the production side of the newspaper and eventually doubled as a reporter. In 1995 he left the newspaper group and travelled overseas for a couple of months. In 1996, Andries rejoined the Zoutpansberger as a reporter. In August 2002, he was appointed as News Editor of the Zoutpansberger, a position he holds until today.

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