Uganda National Journalism Awards

The African Centre for Media Excellence (ACME), with support from Hivos, is managing the Uganda National Journalism Awards intended to recognise and promote excellence in reporting and to inspire quality journalism in Uganda. The awards are open to all journalists, full-time and freelance, working in Uganda based on work published or broadcast between January and December 2013.

There are 16 reporting categories for which journalists can directly compete:

• Agricultural news reporting: This award will recognise the best agricultural or production writing in Uganda. Entries must have farming practice, agriculture policy, trends, research, innovation, or trade at their core. Broader themes of hunger, nutrition, climate change, and environment may be accepted if the entries demonstrate their link and impact on the agriculture sector.
• Arts and culture journalism: The award recognises articles or broadcasts that provide excellent context and background to artistic critique and offer nuances and provocative insights into the arts and culture sector. Judges will acknowledge stories that are informed by in-depth knowledge of the historical, political and aesthetic forces that shape arts and culture in Uganda.
• Business, economic, and financial reporting: This award will be given to a business, economic, or financial news story that demonstrates excellence, creativity, and journalistic merit.
• Commentary: Entries are open for any writing by an individual that expresses a personal point of view, including columns, news blogs, and other forms of opinion, but not editorials. The entries may be analytical interpretive, humorous, or a combination of such qualities. Items may be submitted by full time journalists, freelance journalists, and regular columnists.
• Editorial cartooning: This award will be granted to an entry that displays visual commentary featuring art, argument, and humour. The editorial cartoons must have appeared in a Ugandan print or online magazine or newspaper.
• Environmental reporting: This award will be given to an author or producer of a story or story series that makes an exceptional contribution to public awareness and understanding of environmental issues. The report or series represents not just exceptional journalism, but also reporting with the potential to bring constructive change.
• Extractive industries reporting: This award will be given for exceptional reporting on oil, gas, or mining.
• Explanatory reporting: This award is for exemplary in-depth analysis and clear presentation of complex issues. Entries should explain a relevant, meaningful, and multifaceted subject to audiences through clear storytelling and presentation. Entries will be judged on the quality of journalism, creative and appropriate uses of media.
• Feature writing: The award will be granted to the feature treatment of any human interest, lifestyle or news topic. Entries can be profiles, interviews, news features, trend stories, or narrative stories.
• Health reporting: The winning entry to this award will be judged on the excellence in covering a wide range of issues including public health, medical research, the business of health care, disease, and health ethics.
• Investigative reporting: This award recognises excellence in reporting, through one's own initiative and work product, matters of importance to the audience. In many cases, the subjects of the reporting wish matters under scrutiny to remain undisclosed. The reporting must not be based on an investigation made by someone else. It is permissible to use excerpts from official records and investigations, but only incidentally and not as primary proof of the investigative conclusion.
• Local reporting: This prize will recognise the work of reporters based outside of Kampala who provide a clear understanding of events, issues, and politics of importance to their town, districts, or regions. It honours reporters who demonstrate excellence and versatility in covering local issues from a local angle.
• National news reporting: This award will be granted to a distinguished reporting on national affairs with significant impact on Uganda. Two separate prizes for broadcast and print entries will be granted.
• Multimedia journalism: The award for this category will be presented to news organisations that make the best use of new media/multimedia technology in their coverage of a single feature story or connected special project series. Examples could include a regular website, blog, chat forum, or the use of existing social networking sites (Twitter or Facebook) to develop or enhance their coverage. Attention will be given to the creative use of new media and how well it contributes to the reader’s in-depth understanding of the issue.
• Political reporting: This award will go to a journalist whose coverage helps develop a unique understanding of politics, key players, and the political process. Judges will look for reporting that is particularly innovative, issue-focused, and informs audiences about their democratic and political choices.
• Sports: This award will go to a journalist whose coverage explores new avenues and finds a new direction in reporting sports. It will also recognise a journalist who brings sporting occasions or sporting events to life with the quality of reporting and/or who produces agenda-setting news on subjects of great general interest. Entries can either be of a specialist nature or span a wide breadth of sporting subjects.

Click here for more information about the award.