Three Armenian blogs, along with well established print, online, TV and radio media, received awards at the Na/Ne 2009 Annual Journalism Award Ceremony held in Yerevan on Tuesday.
Banadzev media production company’s blog took the 1st prize in blog category, with Radio Van’s blog coming second, while journalist, social media guru Shushan Harutyunyan’s Blansh blog took the 3rd slot.
The Na/Ne Award instituted by the British Council and the OSCE Office in Yerevan seeks to encourage high quality media publications on women issues. This year the ceremony was held for the second time, and the initiators plan to turn it into an annual event.
Admittedly, the blog-posts which were presented for the contest, were a notch better than any of the articles presented in the online media or print media category, which gave me a special pleasure while taking part in jury discussions, where I turned out to be some sort of a ‘self-styled blogging specialist’, even though I was invited into the jury as the head of a journalistic organization – the Media Diversity Institute, Armenia.
I ended up handing out awards to the winning bloggers under the gaze of cameras and a rather distinguished audience consisting of Ambassador of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to Armenia, Charles Lonsdale, the Head of the OSCE Office Yerevan, Sergey Kapinos, a large number of journalists, media professionals, representatives of NGOs.
Blogging certainly feels cool these days, and now its starting to feel professional too. Good job winners!
PS: I added this on a second thought. To be more honest, let’s make it clear, that all three winning bloggers were actually journalists, media professionals who blog.
agree with your P.S….
ps. is not so relevant, because in case of “blogs vs traditional journalistic” point is not being a professional writer. You will need this skills in both cases to succeed. Point is format. Blogs are more personal, and are better format for spreading information which should reach heart of auditorium, and not just only mind.
Mk’s point is rather convincing. Actually, I’ve changed my mind.
I don’t know about “better way” of spreading information but the blogger who is a reporter in profession is usually not shackled by the editor of the news outlet s/he works for.
The only issue I can see is the news outlet not liking a competing outlet for news by their employee but competitive issues like that are not yet on the radar in Armenia (the problems there are more basic such as things like free media and such).