National Lottery to sponsor Local Media Awards
THE National Lottery has been announced as sponsors of the Local Ireland Media Awards 2018.
The awards honour the talents of the hundreds of journalists, photographers, designers and advertising executives involved in producing local weekly titles in both print and digital format every week.
Local Ireland is the voice and representative association for 45 local weekly titles across the country offering local news to 1.5 million readers each week outside Dublin and Cork.
The awards, now in their third year, will feature 14 categories spanning all areas and disciplines of modern journalism including news, sport, features, advertising, design and online.
This year there will be a special category for the journalist or newspaper that has given the best coverage to a National Lottery Good Cause beneficiary.
The 2018 judging panel will be chaired by Kevin Rafter, Professor of Political Communication and Head of the School of Communications at DCU. Other judges include journalist and broadcaster Caroline Murphy; award-winning photographer and picture editor Frank Miller; broadcaster and author Valerie Cox; Andrew Sinclair, Deputy Managing Director, OMD, and Anthony Quigley, Digital Marketing Institute.
The Awards dinner takes place in the Radisson Blu Hotel, Athlone, Co. Westmeath, on Thursday, May 24.
Commenting on the launch of this year’s Local Ireland Media Awards, Frank Mulrennan, President, Local Ireland, said: ‘ The high level of entries over the last two years – averaging 380 a year – is a powerful indicator of the vitality and importance of this section of Irish media.
The past year has seen some extraordinary developments in terms of the credibility of news sources. It is against this context that we can authoritatively state local newspaper readers know that they can rely on and trust the content in their local paper.’
Dermot Griffin, Chief Executive of Premier Lotteries Ireland, operator of the National Lottery, said: ‘We are delighted to be sponsoring the Local Ireland Media Awards this year. Regional papers hold a very special place in the heart of communities all over Ireland.’
He added: ‘ They are the longest serving news medium in the country and despite the fact that the print media is going through challenging times it is good to see local newspapers holding their own.’