Journalism Awards for Excellence 2016 on 25 July

The 18th edition of the Journalism Awards for Excellence program will culminate with the annual Awards Night on Tuesday, 25 July at the Empire Ballroom of the Mount Lavinia Hotel, the host hotel for the ceremony.

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. 

The aim of the program is to recognise professionalism in 14 categories of the print media of Sri Lanka and reward excellence over a particular year. An overseas scholarship is also offered by the Lakshman Kadirgamar Foundation to the winner of the Denzil Peiris Young Reporter of the Year. 

It also honours those who have served the journalistic profession for more than 45 years with a Lifetime Achievement Award. The five recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Awards for 2016 are Widana Gamage Gunerathne, Lakshman Jayawardena, S.A.C.M. Kuwaldeen, Palavasam Panneer Selvam and Gaston de Rosayro. 

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.

Keells is the main sponsor of this year’s event along with the National Lotteries Board and the Development Lotteries Board. Other sponsors are People’s Bank and Bank of Ceylon. SriLankan Airlines will fly the winner of the Young Reporter of the Year Award abroad for a course of study. 

Brief profiles of the 

Life Time Achievement Award winners

Widana Gamage Gunerathne    

Widana Gamage Gunerathne, who has recorded 51 years as a journalist, commenced his journalist career in 1963 as the Kamburupitiya Group Correspondent of Lake House. A few years later he joined Lake House as a staffer. WG, as he is popularly known among his colleagues, became the news editor of the Dinamina and later the Deputy Editor of Silumina. He has also worked in the Sunday Observer.  WG won a scholarship from the Asia Foundation and studied Humanities in Journalism at the Michigan University, USA.  He worked at the Media Secretariat of President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga for three years.  He later joined Wijeya Newspapers.  He became Provincial Editor of the daily Lankadeepa. WG was the first head of the Lankadeepa website. He has translated and edited several books. He received his education from Rahula College, Matara, Batuwita Vidyalaya, Kitalagama and Tihagoda Junior School.

Lakshman Jayawardena

Lakshman Jayawardena joined the Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd. (Lake House) as a trainee journalist in 1965 and worked in the Janatha, Dinamina and was News Editor of the Silumina newspapers. He later joined the Wijeya Newspapers and helped establish the Lankadeepa (daily) and held the positions of News Editor, Deputy Editor and Associate Editor. He rejoined Lake House in 1995 as its Chairman. During his tenure as Chairman, the Daily News and Sunday Observer online editions were inaugurated. He also started the Journalism Training Institute. He later moved on and joined the Sri Lanka Foreign Service and was appointed Press Attaché to the Sri Lankan High Commission in Canada and India. He has authored several books and among them was a book in Sinhala introducing the Internet and also a book on the Sri Lankan Foreign Service.  

S.A.C.M. Kuwaldeen

S.A.C.M. Kuwaldeen commenced his career in journalism through the Dinapathi Daily Newspaper in 1966. Kuwaldeen, who had his education in Jaffna, has written several short stories and articles for several national newspapers. He was a reporter for Eelamani Newspaper which was published by the Times Limited in the 1970s and Seithy magazine published in Kandy. He continues his work in the Kandy-Senkadagala area as a correspondent for the Virakesari Newspaper. His short stories were published in publications such as Virakesari, Virakesari Weekly and Mithiran. He has received many awards - the Rathinadeepam Award in 1996, Sahithya Award for Media in 2005 from the Central Province Hindu Cultural Ministry and Maadhiya Suri Award sponsored by the Sri Lanka Graduate University, Asgiriya Buddhist Faculty. 

In 2010, the Sri Lanka Muslim Media Forum honoured him with an Achievers Medal and to crown it all off the State awarded him the Kalabhushana Award. 

Palavasam Panneer Selvam

Palavasam Panneer Selvam was born in Colombo and started his journalistic career at the Virakesari newspaper at Express Newspapers Ceylon Ltd. He writes articles connected with parliament, politics, general news and analytical articles based on Tamil Nadu politics. 

Gaston de Rosayro

Gaston de Rosayro is a professional writer who possesses five decades of journalistic experience both in Sri Lanka and the Asian region. He has held several editorial executive positions including the title of Editor-in-Chief in newspapers in Colombo, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. He started his career at the Daily News as a reporter and subeditor and its sister afternoon journals the Observer and Sunday Observer as a reporter, sub-editor, feature writer and columnist. 

He left Sri Lanka in 1978 to take up an appointment with the New Straits Times in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as an Executive Subeditor. At the end of his contract he was invited to join a new newspaper, the Singapore Monitor, as a Senior Editor. In 1985 he was recruited to join the Hong Kong Standard as a Managing Editor Publications in which capacity he worked for eight years. He joined the South China Morning Post as a Senior Editor in 1993. He was appointed Colombo Correspondent for the Post in 1995. During his stints in these overseas journals he was a frequent contributor to the Lake House journals. On returning to Sri Lanka, he was requested to establish a newspaper - The Weekend Express and was its Editor-in-Chief. 

Gaston is also an author and one of his publications includes the highly acclaimed biography of Rienzie T. Wijetilleke titled ‘The Banker, the Man, the Legend’. Another is the greatly applauded book on satire titled ‘The Serendib Spirit’.