The Australian Council of Agricultural Journalists has announced their Star Prize for Rural Broadcasting Awards. Yours truly was happy to be one of the judges for this first ever award program. You can see the entries on their website.
If Sarina Locke thanks her Mum when she accepts the inaugural Australian Star Prize for Rural Broadcasting today, it will be for more than conventional reasons.
The Canberra-based ABC journalist took out the new award with an impressive radio documentary based around a visit to West Timor where she followed in the footsteps of her mother, Dr Russ Locke.
A veterinarian from Holbrook in southern NSW, Dr Locke worked in West Timor 15 years ago, helping village women to vaccinate their chickens as part of an AusAid project to develop veterinary services in the Eastern Islands.
Sarina visited her at the time, and decided to return last year with financial assistance from the Crawford Fund and Australia’s Centre for International Agricultural Research, to find out whether the $40 million Australia spent on agricultural aid in Indonesia in 2009 was helping to lift farming families out of deep poverty.
Sarina was presented with a $1000 cheque by award sponsor Rabobank at a gathering of the Farm Writers Association of NSW in Sydney. She also received a certificate as winner of the radio category in the award, which was organised by the Australian Council of Agricultural Journalists (ACAJ).
Adelaide-based ABC Television journalist Kerry Staight won the television category with her piece, ‘All in the Family’, broadcast on ABC Landline on February 11, 2009.
Ian Doyle from Doyle Media Services, also based in Adelaide, was given an encouragement award in the category for online video, for a piece broadcast via the S. Kidman and Co website.
The Star Prize was adjudicated by a panel of three judges:
Veteran radio and television broadcaster, Neil Inall, well known as presenter of the former ABC television program, ‘Countrywide’, and Seven network’s ‘Cross Country’.
Former ABC rural reporter and executive producer of the ABC’s Rural Department in WA, Alan Richardson, who is now regional content manager for ABC South East SA.
Pioneering online rural broadcaster, Chuck Zimmerman, from Missouri in the United States, whose company, Zimmcomm New Media, specialises in blogging and podcasting for the agricultural industry.
ACAJ president and award coordinator Liz Harfull said the judging panel were extremely impressed with Sarina’s piece, which she researched, produced, edited and presented on her own.
“Our panel of three judges found it an excellent example of where personal family involvement gave the story an extra dimension,” she said. “It was well-crafted with clear audio and sound effects, a logical progression of the story line; and an original, lively and creative approach that held attention despite it being a long piece.”