AUT's Te Waha Nui tops political coverage awards

Auckland University of Technology dominated the Wallace Awards for political journalism and general election coverage this year.

The journalism newspaper Te Waha Nui, with its special three-edition coverage of this year's general election and campaign, won the top award and a prize of $750.

The judges complimented AUT's School of Communication Studies paper on its "breadth of coverage, effective choice and use of a variety of writing styles, good design and an above-average standard of writing generally."

Duncan Greive and his colleagues on Te Waha Nui won the major merit prize of $500 for a portfolio of two stories, and Britton Broun (with colleague Bonnie White for one story) won the second major merit prize of $300 for a portfolio of three stories.

Miles Erwin, Rosie Cotter and Nicole Stanley also won merit awards of $100 each.

Three students from three other NZ journalism programmes also won merit prizes.

Lisa Thompson and Michael Wright of Canterbury University won a highly commended award of $200, and Hamish McNeilly (Southern Institute of Technology) and Megan Whelan (Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology) were awarded $100 merit prizes.

Forty nine entries were received by the judges.

Dr Helena Catt, chief executive of the Electoral Commission, sponsor of the awards, presented the prizes to the AUT students today in their Te Waha Nui newsroom.

News Production course leader Dr David Robie said the success was a credit to the hard work that the Te Waha Nui editorial team had put into producing their election coverage.

"It was the first time our newspaper has covered the national elections and a lot of fine individual and team effort was put into the coverage. Many excellent and innovative creative ideas were introduced by the team and they really produced an election paper to be proud of," he said.

Te Waha Nui was launched by the School of Communication Studies in November 2003.

http://www.tewahanui.info