O’Conall Street

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) has honoured Northern Ireland’s leading journalists at this year’s Coca Cola-sponsored Press and Broadcast Awards.

A total of 19 awards were presented at Friday’s gala ceremony compèred by RTE’s Miriam O’Callaghan at the Hastings Europa Hotel, Belfast.

The event’s top award - the Coca Cola CIPR Northern Ireland Journalist of the Year – went to David McKittrick, Ireland correspondent of The Independent. The Daily Newspaper of the Year award was won by the Irish News while the County Down Spectator picked up the Weekly Newspaper of the Year title.

Other top winners included Martin Breen for Scoop of the Year and Print News Journalist of the Year and the Belfast Telegraph’s Chrissie Russell who was named Newcomer of the Year title and winner of the Martin O’Hagan Memorial Bursary.

A Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Malcolm Brodie who held the position of sports editor of the Belfast Telegraph for more than 40 years until he retired from full time work at the paper in 1991.

In addition to the coveted title of Journalist of the Year, David McKittrick was also named Feature Journalist of the Year. The judging panel described him as:

“A brilliant commentator on Northern Ireland’s rapidly changing history who finds new ways to reflect life in the Province to a wider audience. He has moved with the times to shine his journalistic light into unexpected corners. David is a journalist with insight and superb style that you are compelled to read to the last paragraph.” 

The panel also paid tribute to the Newspaper of the Year, the Irish News which it described as an elegant, serious newspaper that is required reading. The citation read:

“It continues to evolve as society changes, providing a comprehensive package of news, features and special sections that reflects the new Northern Ireland community. Tabloid in format, it retains its serious values as it broadens its scope.  It is a paper of record with serious interest and a good news sense.”

Meanwhile, in a close-run contest, The County Down Spectator took the Weekly Newspaper of the Year category because, the judging panel said, “it is a traditional local newspaper that is brilliantly executed.”

“Retaining solid local newspaper values and easy to read, it has all the news the community could want and displays an ability and agility to respond to breaking news on deadline.”

Speaking at the awards ceremony, Maire Campbell, public affairs and communications manager of main sponsor, Coca Cola Bottlers (Ulster) Ltd, congratulated all those who had taken part.

“As a global brand operating locally, genuine community investment is a strategic priority for us, and we are honored to pledge our support to the CIPR Press and Broadcast Awards 2008/9.

“We are pleased to pay tribute to the many talented individuals from the world of press and broadcast in Northern Ireland,” added Maire.

Conall McDevitt, chair of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) NI thanked Coca Cola for sponsoring the awards along with the event’s associate sponsors Belleek Living, Bombardier, Harrison Photography, MCI Belfast, Musgrave Retail Partners NI, Phoenix Natural Gas, SBD Events, S Hill and Company, Smarts and Spar. 
 
Conall commented: “I thank each and every member of the media who entered the press and broadcast awards which are the only ones anywhere in these islands to be organised by the public relations profession
 
“Your determination to compete and your desire to excel has characterised this occasion since its inception 15 years ago.
 
“Thank you for making this night a special one. And most of all, for filling our lives with news and gossip and something to argue about,” added Conall.

2007/08 COCA COLA CIPR PRESS AND BROADCAST AWARD WINNERS

Coca Cola CIPR Lifetime achievement award.
Winner - Malcolm Brodie

Coca Cola CIPR Journalist of the Year (sponsor: Coca Cola).
Winner David McKittrick - The Independent

Coca Cola CIPR Newspaper of the Year (sponsor: Coca Cola)
Winner - Irish News 
Sunday newspaper of the Year - Sunday World 
Daily newspaper of the Year - Irish News

Coca Cola CIPR Weekly newspaper of the Year (sponsor: Musgrave Retail Partners NI) 
Winner - County Down Spectator

Coca Cola CIPR Scoop of the Year (sponsor: SBD Events)   
Winner - Martin Breen*, News of the World

Coca Cola CIPR Print news journalist of the Year (sponsor: CIPR)   
Winner - Martin Breen*, News of the World
Daily print news journalist - David Gordon, Belfast Telegraph
Sunday print news journalist - Martin Breen*, News of the World

Coca Cola CIPR News website of the Year (sponsor: CIPR)   
Winner - Commmunity Telegraph

Coca Cola CIPR Weekly newspaper journalist of the Year (sponsor: Phoenix Natural Gas)  
Winner - Mark McKelvey, Ulster Herald

Coca Cola CIPR Business journalist of the Year (sponsor: S Hill and Company)
Winner - James Stinson, Irish News
Broadcast business journalist - Yvette Shapiro, BBC
Print business journalist - James Stinson, Irish News

Coca Cola CIPR Sports journalist of the Year (sponsor: CIPR)   
Winner - Denise Watson, BBC
Broadcast sports journalist - Denise Watson, BBC
Print sports journalist - Jim Gracey, Sunday Life

Coca Cola CIPR Current affairs/news broadcaster of the Year (sponsor: MCI Belfast)
Winner - Stephen Nolan, BBC
Radio current affairs broadcaster - Stephen Nolan, BBC
TV current affairs broadcaster - Kevin Magee, BBC

Coca Cola CIPR Magazine or supplement of the Year (sponsor: Bombardier)
Winner - 24/7 section, Belfast Telegraph
Magazine - Ulster Tatler Interiors, Ulster Journals 
Supplement - 24/7 section, Belfast Telegraph

Coca Cola CIPR Feature journalist of the Year (sponsor: Spar)
Winner - David McKittrick, The Independent
Broadcast feature journalist - Chris Page, BBC
Print feature journalist - David McKittrick, The Independent

Coca Cola CIPR Specialist journalist of the Year (sponsor: Belleek Living)
Winner - Paula Mackin, Sunday World
Broadcast specialist journalist - Dot Kirby, BBC
Print specialist journalist - Paula Mackin, Sunday World

Coca Cola CIPR Production journalist of the Year (sponsor: Harrison Photography)
Winner - Jeremy Kirker, Irish News

* Martin Breen is now employed by Sunday Life
Coca Cola CIPR Current affairs programme of the Year (sponsor: CIPR)
Winner - The Pit Bull Sting, Spotlight, BBC

Coca Cola CIPR Cameran/crew of the Year (sponsor: CIPR)
Winner - John Vernard, UTV

Coca Cola CIPR Photographer of the Year (sponsor: Smarts)  
Winner - William Cherry, Press Eye

Coca Cola CIPR Martin O’Hagan Memorial Bursary Newcomer of the Year
Winner - Chrissie Russell, Belfast Telegraph
Broadcast newcomer - Barry Weir, Citybeat
Print newcomer - Chrissie Russell, Belfast Telegraph
 

Below are the comments I will be making at tonight’s Coca Cola CIPR Press and Broadcast Awards:

 Deputy First Minister, Ladies and gentlemen is a wonderful pleasure to welcome you all here tonight for the 15th Coca Cola CIPR Press and Broadcast Awards.

Can I thank Coca Cola for their continued sponsorship and support as well as the other sponsors and of course my colleagues on the CIPR Committee for the voluntary commitment and enthusiasm for all the events we host. No awards would be possible without the judges and can I thank them all and in particular Bob Satchell as chairperson for committing to the onerous task of adjudicating on very high quality work.  Of course none of this would be possible without the work of MCI Ovation, our events company, who are pulling this party together for us all. Can you join with me in showing your appreciation for all of the above. 

Most of all can I thank each and every member of the press who entered these awards. The ongoing determination to excel and desire to compete has characterised this night since its inception a decade and a half ago. Tonight will be no different.

It is a great pleasure to welcome you Deputy First Minister. In the tenth anniversary year of the Good Friday Agreement I can think of no finer way of acknowledging our shared institutions and in welcoming the opportunities created by locally accountable government then by your presence here tonight Mr McGuinness. I know you will have to leave us after your remarks for another engagement but on behalf of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and I am sure everyone here, can I thank you for making the time to be with us and wish our institutions a long and productive life.

These are the only press awards organised by the public relations’ profession anywhere in these islands. I know colleagues elsewhere on these islands are exploring the possibility of hosting similar events. We would encourage them to do so. The fourth estate deserves recognition and we are particularly proud to be associated with you.

Long used to being world news little did we ever think that our press would become the talk of every editor in the free world. Yet the recent determination of one newspaper to defend the principle of fair comment has brought a global spotlight on this city. The CIPR stands with the Irish News as I believe we all do for defending this on behalf of the free press everywhere. 

Our new institutions have brought challenges for us all. The business of investigative journalism has moved from the dark allies of paramilitarism to the accounts of state and the concerns of local politics. We have recognised this with a new category, scoop of the year. For many of you Freedom of Information is the torch you can shine in the filing cabinets of public administration. The bain of many a colleague in the public sector it remains none the less a fundamental plank of open government. There can be no dark corners in a free society. 

Worldwide 87 journalists were killed in 2007 doing their job. We remember them and the only journalist murdered during our conflict, Martin O’Hagan. 8 more have fallen this year. Killed for seeking the truth. On night’s like tonight I am reminded of the words of the great journalist and philosopher Albert Camus when he said that  “A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad.”

Of course if it not just hard news we celebrate tonight. It is all news. From features to fillies the business pages to the glory of our great games you give us something to talk about over coffee to text about when bored and, for the die hards like myself a blog or two along the way.

Thank you for making this night a special one.

And most of all for filling our lives with news and gossip and something to argue about. 

There is a very interesting piece in this week’s Economist on politics and new media which is worth reproducing. Picks up on quite a few themes which we covered last week here with Slugger O’Toole.

British politics is missing out on the potential of new media - Economist

EVEN the least fogeyish of politicians have been flummoxed by the internet. Tony Blair, champion of all things modern, paid no end of lip service to the potential of new media as prime minister but was comically technophobic himself. Still, the internet plays a role in huge areas of British public life: party politics, punditry and government itself. But web aficionados lament a yawning gap with America, and with the most go-ahead corners of Europe.

The official websites of the main political parties—Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats—get less web traffic than the most popular political blogs, and much less than even the far-right British National Party. No surprise, say cyber enthusiasts; they do a passable job as repositories of information but offer little scope for users to get involved beyond signing up for e-mail distribution lists.

The Tories want to transform their online presence, and Gordon Brown, the prime minister, has recruited new staff to overhaul Labour’s. Both parties have wised up, it seems, to foreign examples of what new media can do for fund-raising and campaigning. Ron Paul, a former candidate for this year’s Republican presidential nomination in America, raised a record of nearly $6m online in one day in December—recalling Howard Dean’s spectacular efforts in the 2004 Democratic race. NSTV, the video website run by Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, proved hugely popular during his campaign for the Elysée Palace last year. By contrast, Webcameron, a video blog starring the Tory leader, David Cameron, has run out of steam since it was launched in 2006.

More vitality can be found in the British blogosphere, which has changed how many people tap in to punditry. But shortcomings remain. Whereas there is broad parity between right and left in the American blogosphere, in Britain the left has yet really to get going. There is no agreement on the best way of measuring web traffic but few dispute that right-wing websites such as Conservative Home, Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale’s Diary are more popular than left-wing rivals such as Liberal Conspiracy, Labour Home and Bloggers4Labour (see table). Some say this is because the party in opposition can usually count on more motivated activists than the party in power. Others contend that right-wing politics are more suited to the punchy, pithy medium of blogging.
And true “civilian journalism” has been slower to emerge in Britain than in America: Britain’s main political blogs are mostly written by insiders, such as former party staffers and established journalists. Blogs also seem to scrutinise politicians and the mainstream media less fiercely in Britain than in America, where senior politicians and big newspapers sense the blogosphere’s watchful eye on their every remark and news report. Guido Fawkes, roughly speaking the British equivalent of America’s Drudge Report, boasts of breaking stories and is certainly resented by some mainstream journalists. But few major scalps have been claimed.

One area where Britain is showing tentative signs of stealing a march is in the use of the internet by government to involve citizens and improve policy-making. Since 2006 the Downing Street website has allowed the public to create and sign online petitions. In amongst the calls for the drummer from The Stranglers to be honoured, Jeremy Clarkson (a mouthy motoring journalist) to become prime minister and Arsenal football club to be “closed down” have been some serious and hugely popular petitions. One in 2006 calling for the government’s road-pricing policy to be scrapped ended up attracting 1.8m signatures.

Mr Brown is not much more web-savvy than his predecessor but some of Westminster’s rising stars are evangelical about the internet’s potential for government. In a speech to the Google Zeitgeist conference in London last year, David Miliband, the blogging foreign secretary, looked forward to the internet allowing people control over public services, not merely access to them. Policy wonks talk excitedly of “Public Services 2.0”.

George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, is another who is thought to “get it”. He wants much more information put online, including American-style crime maps and every item of government spending over £25,000 ($49,000). More radically, he is flirting with “open-sourcing” policy: some companies now go online to solicit solutions to stubborn problems, so why not the public sector?

Of course, there are caveats to all this fervour. One reason why American political parties have snazzy websites is that they can afford to; there is far less money sloshing around in British politics, and few regret that. America’s vibrant blogosphere has emerged partly in response to relatively staid mainstream media, whereas Britons seeking partisanship and wit can get it from a host of newspapers. Some also say that the publicly funded BBC’s well-nourished website crowds out other potential players. And online consultation still leaves the structural political problem of how to respond. A million people moderately interested in a particular issue may have less influence on the government than a smaller but more passionate bunch willing to lobby in the old way.

Yet web gurus insist that British politics could be doing much more with the internet, and the idea of open-sourcing policy particularly intrigues them. Government efforts to solicit the public’s ideas are often clunkingly non-specific: asking people what they think should be done about, say, crime is unlikely to result in much new thinking. Narrowing the question to particular problems, often in particular locations, is cannier. “You may only get one truly workable idea out of a thousand,” says Tom Steinberg, a former government-policy adviser who set up the e-petitions website and now runs mySociety, a charity operating websites designed to foster civic engagement. “But that one idea makes it worthwhile.”

Tonight is the Annual Chartered Institute of Public Relations Press and Broadcast Awards, sponsored by Coca Cola. As this year’s CIPR Chair it has been a busy week with final arrangements and all that. Speech is written and the stage is set for now for the only press and broadcast awards on these islands organised by the public relations profession. If you are interested in all the results I will post them here at about 10.15pm tonight (Friday).

 I’ll also post a copy of my own remarks late this afternoon.

Meantime there is a tux to be collected and shoes to be polished. Can’t wait for the Lifetime Achievement Award. The recipient has no idea he is going to be the man of the night. He was the unanimous choice when the editors met last November and a man who can quite literally claim to have seen it all.

Three weeks ago a man was left for dead in Belfast city centre after being randomly attacked by a group of men who were reported to be wearing ‘Stone Island’ jackets. The hooligans were using the cover of an old firm derby and a Cliftonville - Linfield games to launch a spree of violence across the city centre. Press reports have linked them to Combat 18.

Last night there was trouble in Dublin when a tiny minority of Northern supporters got violent before the Setanta Cup fixture with St Pat’s in Inchicore. The front pages of all the local papers are plastered with the bloodied face of a man being arrested by Gardai. He is wearing a ‘Stone Island’ jacket.

This morning Linfield’s chairman did himself little favours on the radio when he came across confused and even contradictory. I have a lot of sympathy for anyone in that position, however this only underlines the need to consider carefully what you want to say and how you are going to say it before giving interviews, particularly live ones.

Another casualty of all this is the ‘Stone Island’ brand which is marketed as a premium brand on this island and available only in the best menswear shops. This small group is engaged by design or by accident in brand assassination. The likelihood of well to do men choosing a clothes brand which has become the uniform for a group of football hooligans reportedly associated with Combat 18 is zero.

I had a good bit of sympathy for Edwin Poots MLA, the Minister for Culture, Arts and Leisure, when I read today’s papers. He was left defending the proposed Maze stadium all on his own in the Assembly yesterday.

There seems to be no chance of the stadium progressing unless a decision is taken before the current First Minister leaves office in early June.  Peter Robinson is known to be rather cool on the idea and could block it as a way of appeasing the TUV elements on his right.

Only time will tell. If the plans are shelved sport will be the big looser. There is no other proposal on the table which will bring the three major codes together in a shared space.    

Mick Fealty, aka Slugger O’Toole, dropped by O’Conall Street (Weber Shandwick’s Belfast Office) for a chat and a coffee last week. We thought we would record a short conversation with him about Irish blogging, the future of online newspapers and the emergence of the ‘author’ brand. We also pressed him on whether Slugger will fill the void for quality political blogging south of the border.

It was a spur of the moment thing so sorry about the audio and the slightly disjointed questioning. Mick’s incisive analysis make up for that though.  

Meanwhile Brian Cowen is in the North today to announce IFSC jobs for Belfast. Varney gave us nothing. At least Dublin is trying to bend the rules to get some quality investment North. They won’t be HQ jobs but will be very welcome none the less. All this only strengthens further the case for a harmonised corporation tax rate on the island of Ireland.

It’s Sunday so why not have an Obama Girl day. For those of you not acquainted with Sen Obama’s no 1 advocate, here is a selection of her ‘work’ . There is no doubt about it, this man has ignited advocates across the States. Hillary may be rocking in NYC with Elton John, but in garages across America the creative juices are definitely flowing for Barack.

Dr Paddy Hillery died today at the age of 84. He was the last of the old style presidents. Fair but never to inspiring and always men with a long track record in government. Things changed utterly when Mary Robinson succeeded him in 1991. The momentum for change has continued under Mary McAleese.

He will be mourned by the State as every late president should. RTE have a decent biography which is worth a read.

Ironically it was comments made by PSNI Chief Constable at a Public Relations Institute of Ireland (PRII) breakfast in Dublin which made the news last night. Sir Hugh commented that political members of the Policing Board in Northern Ireland seem more interested in playing tribal politics than addressing the strategic issues facing policing in the region. This triggered predictable outrage from Sinn Fein who called on him to put up or shut up. Interestingly this morning’s Irish News takes a different view. The paper’s editorial argues that Mr Orde should be entitled to his opinion and feel free to express it. The paper highlights a specific incidence in which politics is creeping onto the board’s agenda and colouring debate - attempt to change 50:50 recruitment.

The PSNI press office had a busy afternoon and there is no doubt their boss is not the world’s greatest diplomat. But his right to comment must be defended. Next time he might want to think about when and where is the best way to do so.