Walkley Foundation 2023: Mid-Year Celebration of Journalism finalists

Finalists for the 2023 Mid-Year Celebration of Journalism have been announced by the Walkley Foundation.

Walkley Foundation Chief Executive Shona Martyn said, “Judging sessions went into extra time as judges weighed up the top entries in highly competitive fields. Everyone selected as a finalist should feel hugely proud. There was a pleasing breadth in the entries too with journalists from across Australia, from news organisations big and small, producing high quality stories on a vast range of topics.”

Winners of all the awards will be announced at the Mid-Year Celebration of Journalism in Sydney on June 15.

TV and related categories:

Shortform journalism
Fleur Connick, Guardian Australia, “Rural water quality investigations”
Claudia Farhart, SBS, “2023 Türkiye-Syria Earthquakes”
Paul Sakkal, The Age, “Operation Daintree: Daniel Andrews under direct investigation in new IBAC probe”

Longform feature or special
Xanthe Gregory, ABC, “The Eugowra flood disaster”
Joey Watson, Guardian Australia, “Inside Australia’s secretive torture survival course for elite soldiers”
Daryna Zadvirna, The West Australian, “My Ukraine: Inside the Warzone”

Coverage of community and regional affairs
Xanthe Gregory, ABC 7.30 and ABC News, “The Eugowra flood disaster”
Melissa Mackay, ABC News, “Unjust Justice”
Hannah Walsh, ABC, “Parents receive apology from Mackay Base Hospital nine years after baby’s death”

Visual storytelling
Rhiona-Jade Armont, Dateline, SBS, “Now You See Me: The Search for Syria’s Missing”
Julian Fell, ABC News, “How the seeds of the 2022 election result were sown years ago”, “Wrenching the blackbox open”, and “What’s your personal rate of inflation”
Daryna Zadvirna, The West Australian, YouTube, “My Ukraine: Inside the Warzone”

Public service journalism
Brooke Fryer, SBS, “Vanished: The unsolved cases of First Nations women”
Lydia Lynch, The Australian, “Lydia Lynch”
Liam Mendes, The Australian, “Alice Springs”

June Andrews Award for Freelance Journalist of the Year
Patrick Abboud, Audible Podcasts, SBS Television / SBS OnDemand, The Project / Network 10, “Patrick Abboud”
Caroline Winter , Apple Podcasts, Sick As A Dog website, “Sick As A Dog: An industry in crisis”
Nina Funnell, news.com.au, “Justice Shouldn’t Hurt”

Our Watch Award
Alexis Daish, A Current Affair, Nine, “Kim’s Fight”
Melissa Fyfe and Jacqueline Maley, Good Weekend Magazine, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, “Rethinking Rape”
Richard Willingham, ABC Investigations, “Shortage of doctors causing victims of sexual crime to wait for forensic examinations”

Humanitarian Storytelling Award
Matthew Davis and Peter O’Donoghue, Foreign Correspondent, ABC, “Myanmar’s Forgotten War”
Tom Joyner, ABC News and ABC 7.30, “Somalia’s looming famine”
Ben Lewis, Colin Cosier and Josh McAtamney, Dateline, SBS, “Teens, Love and War”

Media Diversity Australia Award
Dan Bourchier, ABC, “Voice reporting by Dan Bourchier”
Hagar Cohen and Raveen Hunjan, ABC, “Racism allegations lead to staff exodus”
Jessica Horner and Nicole Mills, ABC, “A Rich News Lens”

June Andrews Award for Arts Journalism
Gabriella Coslovich, Good Weekend, “The Art of the Steal”
Marc Fennell, ABC TV, “Stuff the British Stole”
Anna Verney and Richard Cooke, Guardian Australia, “‘Miles Franklin-nominated novelist apologises for plagiarising Nobel laureate ‘without realising’’

At the Celebration, winners will also be announced for the Jacoby-Walkley Scholarship with Nine, the WIN News Broadcast Scholarship, the Walkley Young Indigenous Scholarship, the inaugural Esme Fenston Fellowship and the Sean Dorney Grant for Pacific Journalism.

Entries for the Walkley Awards open on July 1st.