On Sunday, November 23, the 2014 edition of the Diamond Award for Media Excellence (DAME) will hold in Lagos with winners emerging in various categories.
The winners will join the list of outstanding Nigerian journalists who have recently won local or international media awards this year for their publications and broadcasts.
The Nigeria Media Merit Award (NMMA) was recently held in Owerri, Imo State. Before NMMA was the CNN MultiChoice African Journalist of the Year award in Tanzania where two Nigerian journalists, Olatunji Ololade of The Nation and Obinna Emelike of BusinessDay won the Medical/Health and Culture categories.
The Editor, Sunday PUNCH, Oluwatoyosi Ogunseye, penultimate week did Nigerian journalism proud by winning the 2014 International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) Knight International Journalism Award.
She also emerged winner of the inaugural African Women in News Leadership award by the World Association for Newspapers (WAN).
Many other journalists including Seun Akioye and Deji Ademigbuji also won other international media awards.
For all the media award winners and nominees this year, I congratulate and urge you all to continue to excel on the job. I join in celebrating you and your achievements.
Your passion, diligence, sacrifice and many more despite all the daily challenges on the job has paid off.
You should be very proud of your professional accomplishments and let it propel you to remain the excellent journalists you all are.
You have done very well to deserve the awards, but there is always room to do better and be the best we can all be in our professional pursuits.
For the nominees who did not win, I wish you best of luck of next time. Getting nominated is an acknowledgement that you are almost as good as the winners.
For those who did not apply but wish they did, watch out for the next call for entries. You may just be the next winner or nominee.
One of the ways to prove how good you are on the job is to subject your work to scrutiny by award panels. Only those who apply get considered. The option is yours.
N.B: My very sincere apologies for not writing this diary since September 23. It was due to circumstances beyond my control. I hope to continue writing it as often as possible as part of my commitment to promoting media career development.
Thanks for reading and sharing with me other colleagues.
Lekan Otufodunrin
Email: info@mediacareerng.org /Telephone: 08023000621 /Twitter: @lotufodunrin /Skype: lekanskype
Photo: Ogunseye receiving her 2014 Knight International Journalism Award
