Kempton Express walked away with top honours for the 2020 Forum of Community Journalists (FCJ) Annual Excellence Awards as the winner of the Best Newspaper of the Year.
The Express won the Watts Trophy for free corporate-owned newspaper (pagination 24 and more) and sister publication, Bedfordview and Edenvale NEWS took third place in the same category.
Germiston City News (GCN), took second place in the free corporate-owned newspaper (pagination 24 and less) category for its October 9, September 18 and August 28 entries.
GCN’ entries for Newspaper of the Year:
Bedfordview and Edenvale NEWS also won the Best Front Page category for corporate-owned free publications.
These newspapers and our fourth sister publication, The Thembisan, are edited by Marietta Lombard.
The FCJ Excellence Awards is open to any permanent editorial staff member working for a local or community print newspaper in SA and the Express entered its December 10, November 19 and November 26 editions from 2020.
This competition is the only national newspaper competition for the South African community press with this year’s event attracting 2 042 individual content pieces entered.
Judges of the newspaper and front page competitions, led by Pedro Diederichs, stated that the newspaper categories were highly contested.
“After careful consideration of all the entries, the standard can only be described as ‘excellent’,” said Diederichs.
“The newspaper categories called for hectic competition and tough decision. As expected, the three C’s (Covid-19, crime and corruption) and the three S’s (sport, services and schools) featured prominently in most entries.”
Judges added that the adjudication process confirmed that community newspapers are still the best source of news for a specific community, the most effective platform where communities’ voices can be heard and they excel in providing details in local and relevant news.
Bedfordview and Edenvale NEWS’ Newspaper of the Year entries:
Other Caxton winners
Caxton Local Media took two of the top three prestigious individual awards.
Wayne van der Walt from Highvelder was announced as the FCJ Photographer of the Year.
He also dominated in the individual photo categories by claiming the best hard news and general news photo of the year awards.
The Alet Roux Award went to Jarryd Westerdale from Roodepoort Record/Northsider.
The Alet Roux is awarded by the judges to a journalist who has been in the industry for less than three years and is a finalist in the FCJ Journalist of the Year competition.
Caxton newsrooms showed that they kept their communities informed since the first reports of Covid-19 reached South African communities.
The Covid-19 reportage category attracted the second-highest number of entries in the writing competition and it was Middelburg Observer’s Daleen Naude who scooped this award.
The winner in the corporate-owned newspaper (free pagination 24 and less) was South Coast Sun followed by GCN.
The Hultzer Trophy for Newspaper of the Year Corporate-owned Paid (circulation 5 000 and less) was Vaalweekblad, edited by Elsje Vermeulen.
