Journalism Awards for Excellence 2018 on 10 Dec.

The 20th edition of the Journalism Awards for Excellence program will culminate with the annual ‘Awards Night’ on Tuesday 10 December at the Empire Ballroom of the Mount Lavinia Hotel, the host hotel for the gala event.

“This year there were 313 applications for 17 categories from 37 daily and weekly newspapers in the three language streams – Sinhala, Tamil and English. Applications were also received from Online News Websites that published a newspaper for the ‘Best Designed News Website,” said Journalism Awards for Excellence 2018 Convener Sukumar Rockwood.

The event, which was launched in 1999 by The Editors’ Guild of Sri Lanka and is now organised by The Editors’ Guild of Sri Lanka in partnership with the Sri Lanka Press Institute, is the biggest media awards program in the country. 

For the first time this year, an award will be presented for ‘Using Right to Information’ to write news or feature stories. It will be awarded for the three language streams Sinhala, Tamil and English.

The aim of the program is to recognise professionalism in the print media of Sri Lanka and reward excellence over a particular year. It also honours those who have served the journalistic profession for more than 40 years with Lifetime Achievement Awards, Rockwood said. The five recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Awards for 2018 are:

The Editors’ Guild also presents two special awards by its own nomination at the event; the D. R. Wijewardene Award for Recognition by Peers and the Public and the Sepala Gunasena Award for Defending Press Freedom in Sri Lanka.

The sponsors for the event are: Platinum – Keells Holdings, Gold – Dialog Axiata, Silver – DFCC, SLIC, LOLC, BoC, NSB, SriLankan Airlines and Bronze – SLPA.