Welcome to the UCD Smorrit Lodge & Spa’s New Year Party! We are delighted to celebrate our second year in hosting the journalist awards, celebrating excellence in the media industry. Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the last 12 months. In this year, we are particularly looking forward to welcoming the awards in partnership with Bank of Ireland. These prestigious awards recognise and reward the hard work of all media journalists across the country over the last year and are set to celebrate next year in partnership with the Irish Film Institute, the University of Leinster and the University of Glasgow.

The success of our first year in hosting the business awards is a great achievement for us and a reminder of the importance of media ownership and influence in the wider society. It is important to acknowledge the role of the business press in the commercial development and the business environment. They operate in a complex environment where commercial relationships need to be nurtured, scrutinised and informed. We have worked very hard over the past 12 months to develop the commercial side of the business awards, which has led to a very successful year for us at the journalist awards.

This year we are very focused on the investigative media and the value that they provide to our society. This aspect of the media awards focuses strongly upon those areas of the media that are committed to ensuring accurate and responsible journalism. In this year’s celebrations, we will be highlighting excellence in the investigative and commercial news media. Journalists and writers will have the opportunity to be honoured at the close of the awards ceremony in the following weeks.

Our second major award is the journalist of the year award, which is chosen by a panel of industry professionals and local experts. The journalist of the year award acknowledges those individuals who have made a significant contribution to the industry who have helped to shape the type of coverage that is provided to the public. This can be down to outstanding reporting, community spirit or an outstanding promotional campaign. The award closes with the Peter Sterpen Journalism Awards, which recognises outstanding work from young journalists.

At the close of the year, the annual journalist of the year awards recognises those who have contributed greatly to the industry and celebrated their achievements in a number of different categories. The broad range of categories includes feature articles, columnists, bloggers and online correspondents, magazine articles and feature stories. These prizes are best-earned by reporters who have a long history of covering breaking stories and issues that interest the public. Awardees are chosen from a wide selection of exceptionally successful candidates, drawn at random.

The New York Times has been the recipient of numerous editor-of-the-year awards over the past few years, including the top prize, which was shared by the Sunday Times and Financial Times. In May this year, it was decided to create a separate investigative media prize to recognise work in that field from outside the UK. It is expected that this prize will become one of the most prominent New York awards events of all time, with reporters and editors from around the world applying to win the top prize. Other major media organisations and publications include the Guardian, the BBC and several magazines. The exact prize purse is unknown, but figures have suggested that it may be in excess of a million pounds.