The Westsider and RMIT Journalism have won a gold-level Global Youth & News Media Prize Award for Journalism.
The Award was in recognition of our coverage of the 2024 Victorian Local Government election coverage.
Local and Independent Newspaper Association (LINA) funded the project’s printing and layout.
In all, Gold, Silver and Community awards were given to 19 entities from 16 countries.
The international panel of expert judges – drawn from leading media organisations such as the French-based News Decoder, the US-based Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy (CCLP), The Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA), the Austrian-based International Press Institute (IPI) and the International Centre for Journalists – said the project had “highly significant impact” and was “easily replicable across geographies and political contexts”.
“Nothing overly complicated – just textbook local crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, reporting,” the panel said. “One would not have to use journalism students, thus introducing nonspecialists to some journalistic basics: cold-call contacting and interviewing.”
