DURBAN - Independent Media received three awards at the International News Media Association (INMA) Global Media Awards held in New York on Friday.
Independent received first prize in the category Best Use Of An Event To Build A News Brand for the Regional and National High School Quiz, which involved creating a platform for teenagers to compete against one another.
Spurred on by the highly successful Cape Argus Schools Quiz, the company’s events division repackaged the concept and rolled it out to schools in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. The competition had no barriers to entry and kept the youth engaged in current affairs via newspapers.
Independent Media also won the Global Media Award for Best In Africa, where judges selected the best of six world regions from the finalists.
African Community Media chief executive Sandy Naudé scooped the Silver Shovel Award alongside Pit Gottschalk of Fever Pit’ch in Germany for their lifetime service to the news industry and to INMA events. Naudé has been a member of INMA since 2003. She joined the INMA board of directors in 2015 and helped organise the INMA conference in South Africa in 2016. She was also nominated to serve on the board of INMA as treasurer for the next three years.
On receiving her award, Naudé thanked Independent Media executive chairman Dr Iqbal Survé for his commitment to ensuring employees from the organisation are given platforms where they can thrive and excel.
This is not the first victory for Independent at the INMA awards. In 2016, the Cape Argus’s #FeesMustFall initiative came second in the category for Best Idea to Encourage Print Readership or Engagement; Isolezwe, South Africa’s largest daily vernacular newspaper, came third in the category for Best Use of Mobile for its soccer game, Asidladle, while the MOJO (mobile journalism) project came third for the Best Use of Social Media.
In 2017, Independent scooped first prize in the category Best Community Service Campaign for the Racism Stops With Me Campaign and was placed second in the Best New Print Product and Best Use of Video for the Independent Home magazine and the Don’t Look Away video series for 16 Days of Activism for No Violence against Women and Children.
Other finalists included the Volt Digital/Independent Media Internship Programme founded in 2017. The programme was created to nurture entrepreneurship in young people where students, inspired by industry experts, complete prescribed online coursework and later are integrated or recruited into the Volt Digital team.