The Irish Times has received more nominations than any other newspaper in the shortlist for this year's national Journalism Awards, with more than twice as many nominations as any of its rivals. The annual awards, run by the newspaper representative body Newsbrands Ireland, aim to celebrate "the quality original journalism that makes the newspaper an indispensable part of Irish daily life".
This year’s awards span 25 categories, ranging from business and politics to showbiz and sport, and are open to journalists working for all national newspapers published in the State. Irish Times journalists achieved 34 nominations in total, with particularly strong showings in the Features (Broadsheet), Foreign Journalism and Digital Excellence categories.
Journalists Miriam Lord, Fintan O'Toole, Ruadhan Mac Cormaic, Rosita Boland, Mark Paul, Fiach Kelly, Conor Lally, Patrick Freyne and Malachy Clerkin were all nominated in more than one category, while there was also recognition for work by Business Editor Ciaran Hancock and critics Eileen Battersby, Catherine Cleary and Peter Crawley, along with foreign correspondents Lara Marlowe and Richard Pine.
David Labanyi was nominated for Scoop of the Year for his work on the Garda breath test scandal, while Carl O'Brien was recognised for his investigative reporting into allegations of misconduct at the University of Limerick. There were also nominations for Simon Carswell's news analysis, and for feature writing by Jennifer O'Connell and Davin O'Dwyer.
Three of the six nominations in the Digital Excellence category went to The Irish Times, with nominations for Ciara Kenny for The Irish Times Abroad project, Dean Ruxton for the Irish Times Lost Leads series and for the Irish Times Fine Gael Leadership Tracker, a project led by Paddy Logue and Fiach Kelly.
For her reporting for The Irish Times on the Syrian refugee crisis, Sally Hayden, was nominated in the Young Journalist of the Year category.
The newspapers with the next largest number of nominations after The Irish Times were the Irish Independent and Daily Star, which each received 14, followed by the Irish Sun with 11. The Irish edition of the London-based Sunday Times received 10 nominations, and its sister paper, the daily Ireland Edition of the London Times, got six. The Sunday Business Post and the Irish Daily Mail each received nine nominations, while the Sunday Independent got six and the Irish Examiner received five.
The winners of this year’s awards will be announced on Thursday, November 2nd at the Mansion House in Dublin.
