Sean Murphy—Our 2016 Journalism Awardee
August 16, 2016
The Crawford Fund’s public awareness program has been supporting journalists to visit and report on international agricultural research projects during what we’ve called ‘seeing is believing’ trips.
More recently, we joined with the Australian Council of Agricultural Journalists to launch our Food Security Journalism Award in 2013. We hope the competition encourages working Australian journalists to investigate the important roles that agricultural research, training and rural development play in global food security.
2016 Food Security Journalism Award
“We had a very strong group of applications this year, across TV, print, radio and online,” said Cathy Reade, the Crawford Fund’s Director of Public Affairs and Communication.
We thank all of this year’s applicants for their entries:
- Zambia AG by Kristy O’Brien, Northern Territory ABC Bi-Media Journalist
- Male Chickens: Unnatural Selection by Caitlyn Gribbin, Federal political reporter for ABC News in Canberra
- Tanzanian farmers working their way out of poverty by Brett Worthington, Producer and presenter with ABC Rural’s national reporting unit
- Magic pulses back into rotations by Jo Fulwood, Freelance rural journalist and part time rural reporter with The Countryman newspaper
- Coconut Comeback by Sean Murphy, Journalist, Landline ABC TV
- In The Zone: Region’s potential casts a wide net by David Binning, Freelance journalist and regular contributor to The Australian Financial Review
- World grain research collaborations critical by Gregor Heard, Fairfax Ag Media’s national grains industry reporter
And we have much pleasure in announcing that the winner is Sean Murphy (pictured), for his story ‘Coconut Comeback’, broadcast on Landline on 19 July.
The judges thought this was an interesting food security story—described as “a cracking yarn” by one of the judges—and it covered a good range of specialists to explain the work and the positive outcomes for food security and poverty alleviation.
We would like to thank the judges who worked with Cathy for our 2016 Food Security Journalism Award—Jayne Curnow, Research Program Manager, Agricultural Systems Management at the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, and Jenni Metcalfe from Econnect Communications who represented the Australian Council of Agricultural Journalists.
Sean will take up his prize—a ‘seeing is believing’ visit to a developing country—in the coming year. His award was announced at our Crawford Fund Annual Conference networking dinner on 29 August.
“I look forward to developing an interesting visit for Sean to experience ag research in the developing world in the coming months,” said Cathy.
“It was a wonderful coincidence that for the conference this year, a feature from an award visit to India by an earlier award winner—James Mitchell Crow of Cosmos Science Magazine—has come out in the magazine and was provided to conference delegates,” said Cathy.
We expect to announce our 2017 Food Security Journalism Award in February 2017.
