[awards]
PTC AWARDS 2010
SAEED KAMALI-DEHGHAN
FORMER City magazine students scooped three of the top prizes at the prestigious Periodicals Training Council (PTC) awards. The 2010 PTC Magazine Academy awards were held at London’s Vinopolis on 26 November. City alumni fared well: three ex-students won category awards, and three came highly commended for efforts in their respective fields. Most promising student journalist of the year went to Moya Sarner (magazine, 2010), while Rachel Smith (magazine, 2010) was highly commended. City students from the magazine MA 2010 class won the New Magazine Concept award for Ground, a publication for baristas. The magazine concept was developed as part of a university project.
ALICE HUTTON ALICE Hutton (newspaper, 2009) has won Feature Writer of the Year at the EDF Energy East of England Awards 2010, held at Trinity Park in Ipswich on 3 February this year. Hutton, a reporter for Cambridge News, submitted features on student riots, street art and paddle boarding, which she researched and wrote in her spare time. The judges described her entries as: “A great read and showing the greatest range of work.”
Winner: Moya Sarner
New Consumer Specialist/Customer Journalist of the Year 2010 went to Daniel Bennett, BBC Focus, BBC Bristol. New Business Features Journalist of the Year was won by Nick Duxbury (magazine, 2007) on Inside Housing, Ocean Media Group, and Camilla Pemberton (magazine, 2009) was highly commended for her work on Community Care, Reed Business Information. In the New Section Editor of the Year category, Lucy Foster (magazine, 2007) was highly commended for ShortList, ShortList Media. Barbara Rowlands, course director of the MA in magazine journalism, said: “We are thrilled that a City student has won the most promising student journalist award for the third year in a row and for the second year has also walked away with the highly commended prize. It’s a real testament to the talented individuals the course attracts, the dedicated journalists who teach them and the work students put into building up prize-winning portfolios.”
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Words by Clare Conway, Sophie Monks Kaufman, Miranda Thompson and Olivia Wakefield
CITY University student Saeed KamaliDehghan has been named journalist of the year at the Foreign Press Association awards for his coverage of the Iranian elections in 2009 and his documentary For Neda. The ceremony was held on 23 November 2010. Dehghan, who studies on the international MA, reported for the Guardian, exposing the corruption underpinning the election results. He said: “I saw terrible things there; people being beaten, even killed. As an Iranian myself it was very important to me to go and report on the trouble.” Dehghan also won an award for best documentary with his work, For Neda, a piece on the life and death of the Iranian protester Neda Agha-Soltan. The documentary saw Dehghan interview the family and friends of AghaSoltan who was shot dead while watching a protest against the election result. Today Agha-Soltan is regarded as an emblem of freedom among Iranians. Dehghan described the documentary as a “triumph” given the Iranian government’s numerous attempts to suppress it – most notably cutting the electricity during the premiere. He has said he will continue to report on his home country “until there is peace in Iran.”
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