Top senior journalists to receive Lifetime Achievement Award today

H. L. D. Mahindapala

Seetha Ranjanee

Stanley Samarasinghe

Sinnathurai Thillainathan

Mohammed Arif Mohammed Nilam

Five senior journalists will receive the coveted Lifetime Achievement Award today at the 24th edition of the annual Journalism Awards for Excellence at the Empire Ballroom of the Mount Lavinia Hotel.

They are H. L. D. Mahindapala, Seetha Ranjanee, Stanley Samarasinghe, Sinnathurai Thillainathan and Mohammed Arif Mohammed Nilam. 

H.L.D. Mahindapala began his journalism career at Lake House and rose to the position of News Editor of the Daily News. Thereafter he went overseas but continued to contribute articles to newspapers on different subjects. In 1990, he returned to the country and rejoined Lake House in the capacity of Chief Editor of the Sunday Observer. He functioned in the position till 1994 and during that period he served as the President of the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association for two years.   

Seetha Ranjanee began her career in the media in 1979 with the Rajarata Service of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation. At the very inception of the Rajarata Service she worked as a script writer and in 1986 she was part of a group that launched the alternative magazine ‘Vivarana.’

Moving to the print media from broadcasting media, she later edited several magazines including Dharani, Shakthi, Maadhya Nireekshana, Samakali, the women’s magazine ‘Eya’ and the cultural magazine ‘Sankalana.’ She was a founding member of the ‘Yukthiya’ alternative newspaper in 1990 and it was a turning point in her journalism career. In her media career spanning over 45 years she has mostly worked as a freelance journalist contributing to various publications including Irida Lankadeepa, Dinamina, Desathiya and Ravaya. She has also played an important role as an activist for media freedom and human rights.

Her contribution to journalism has been recognized by the Editors’ Guild of Sri Lanka in 2004 when she won the award for best reporting on Social development Issues and in 2012 when she was awarded the Sepala Gunasena award for Media Freedom.   

Born in Colombo on 24 January 1940, Stanley Samarasinghe commenced his media career in 1962 from The Sun newspaper. Samarasinghe had received further training in the newspaper field in Iraq and the then Soviet Union. With a 58-year career in media, Samarasinghe had worked at Dawasa, Eththa, Divaina, Dinamina, Daily News, Mawbima and Ceylon Today newspapers as well as the electronic media channels of Sirasa. He had served 35 years of his media career as a senior journalist covering the Supreme Court.

It was Samarasinghe who first revealed to the country about the controversial killing of Premawathi Manamperi on 17 April 1971 through the Eththa newspaper. It was Samarasinghe who revealed to the country Manamperi’s murder. In order to uncover the story, which was received at the time through an anonymous source, Samarasinghe had travelled to Kataragama on a directive by then Editor of the Eththa newspaper, B.A. Siriwardena, amidst emergency laws and a curfew that were in-place at the time. After uncovering the story in Kataragama, Samarasinghe had then reported the story to the country along with photographs that were taken by him. The story even reached the international arena with human rights activists also taking up the case internationally.

Sinnathurai Thillainathan, a native of Vadamarachchi, Puloli, Jaffna, has been working continuously as a regional correspondent for Virakesari, Sri Lanka’s leading Tamil National newspaper, for more than half a century. He took to journalism in 1968 as Jaffna Regional Correspondent of the now defunct Kandy-based weekly newspaper Seithi. He later joined EezhaNadu daily published from Jaffna and worked there until 1985. Thillainathan, who joined Virakesari as Puloli Correspondent in 1972, was later appointed as Virakesari’s Correspondent for the entire Vadamarachchi region from 1997 to 2009. He was honored with the award for the best journalist of Jaffna district in the year 2003 by the Sri Lanka Tamil Media Alliance and in the same year The Editors Guild of Sri Lanka presented him with a special award for his news service in Jaffna under trying circumstances. In addition, in appreciation of Thillainathan’s service, Point Pedro Divisional Secretariat awarded the titles of Kalaiparithi and Kalaichakaram. 

Mohammed Arif Mohammed Nilam, who was born in 1946, received his early education at the Roman Catholic Mixed School in Negombo. He started his maiden journey in media as the Colombo South Correspondent for Lake House while serving as Kurunegala District Correspondent for Virakesari until 1983. Al-haj Nilam was appointed as a sub editor for Thinakkural Newspaper in 1990 and thereafter he was promoted as a senior sub editor there. He served as consultant for Tamil publications at Lake House from 2015 to 2020. He received the Excellent Journalist Award from Tamil Journalists’ Forum in 2004 and the Sri Lanka Muslim Media Forum honoured him by presenting him with the Senior Journalist Award. He was honoured by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs with the honorary title Kalabyshanam in 2009. In 2015, he received the lifetime achievement award by the Sri Lanka Press Council. Al-haj Nilam was the first Sri Lankan Tamil language Journalist to attend an event at the White House in USA with former Prime Minister and present President Ranil Wickremesinghe in 2022.