Lotto sponsors ‘18 local media awards
The National Lottery has been announced as 2018 sponsors of the Local Ireland Media Awards, which saw Sligo Champion reporter Sorcha Crowley win Best News Feature in 2017.
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.
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.
Content published during the period February 2017 and January 2018 is eligible for entry.
The Awards dinner takes place in the Radisson Blu Hotel, Athlone on Thursday May 24 th 2018.
Local Ireland President, Frank Mulrennan said: “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.”
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.
Chief Executive of Premier Lotteries Ireland, Dermot Griffin, said: “Regional papers hold a very special place in the heart of communities all over Ireland. 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.”