The Union of Journalists of South Sudan (UJOSS) has launched journalism excellence awards that will be awarded in November.
“We are actually promoting professionalism, we want to achieve some level of specialization that is why we are talking about excellence in climate change reporting, excellence in gender and we are actually taking more interest in an area we feel we are comfortable with,” Oyet Patrick, the president of UJOSS said during press conference held in Juba on Wednesday.
He said they will award journalists in various fields of specialization such as sport, health, politics and agriculture reporting.
“We are moving towards the direction that a journalist should be at least specialized in a certain field,” Patrick said.
Moyiga Nduru, a member for the panel of judges said the categories include reporting on health, economy, politics, human rights, peace, education and climate change, gender, culture, youth and sport and also photography.
“This is the first time that the union of journalists is launching a national project to award journalists from various fields, we expect journalists to apply from any corner of the country from Renk to Nimule,” he said.
Suzan Alfonse, the head of the panel of judges said that the awards will provide opportunity to journalists to exercise their daily activities openly, adding that the event will expose well-performing journalists to the public.
“We thank UJOSS for initiating this kind of event giving all our journalists in South Sudan the opportunity to exercise openly their daily activities; some of them are not being recognized. We felt that it is high time to recognize them and have them exposed to the people,” Alfonse said.
Gabriel Shadar, the secretary of the panel of judges said that the awards will inspire journalists to improve on their work, adding that the team will receive application from different areas across the country.
“We will receive submissions through organizing committee, we will go through the rules and categorize them, we will focus on any one who is applying anywhere in the country, this is an opportunity to improve ourselves,” Shadar said.
