Journalist wins gong

THE Townsville Bulletin’s John Andersen has won a major journalism prize.

Andersen won the 2019 Local Government Association of Queensland Bean Lockyer Ticehurst award for excellence in regional journalism for a series of stories, which appeared in the Bulletin, on the monsoon floods that devastated North West Queensland in February.

The LGAQ said Andersen’s entry stood out among a big field of quality contenders for the award, most of them covering the effects of the flooding in the northwest.

Local Government Association of Queensland president Mark Jamieson said Andersen used his decades of reporting experience and fine grasp of storytelling to recount a harrowing but important episode in the state’s history.

“There are few journalists who have the range or depth of contacts that John has built up over the years and it showed with these stories,” he said.

“John was one of the first reporters into the main scene of the disaster, which eventually killed an estimated 500,000 stock and destroyed infrastructure over an area twice the size of Victoria.

“He immediately understood the gravity of such an immense loss of cattle, what it would mean for the region and how devastating the floods would be for the personal lives of those primary producers in the front line.”

The award, which comes with a $15,000 prize, commemorates the work of John Bean, Paul Lockyer and Gary Ticehurst, a deeply respected media crew who died in tragic circumstances in 2011.