Georgina Henry Awards shortlist announced
A huge congratulations to our shortlisted journalists who go through to the next stage of the Georgina Henry Awards. We look forward to celebrating the winner with you live at The Media Freedom Awards 2024 on 12 November! The winner will receive a cash prize of £4000 - sponsored by WIGGIN LLP. Here are your top five below:
Philippa Willitts for Medusa Was Framed
“Medusa was Framed will be a journalist-led podcast that will utilise audio to delve into the multifaceted aspects of rape culture and victim blaming, shedding light on their deep-rooted causes, effects, and the urgent need for change. Interviews with survivors, activists and experts will amplify marginalised perspectives, challenge deeply held beliefs, and encourage critical reflection, in particular looking at the under-explored intersectional implications of rape culture and victim blaming. To be accessible to disabled people, who are twice as likely to experience sexual assault, every episode will not only be transcribed but will have an Easy Read summary for learning disabled people, something no other podcast, to my knowledge, has ever done before.”
Felicia Pennant for SEASON Zine
“Independent football and fashion publication SEASON zine breaks barriers in football and journalism. With an estimated 3.5 billion football fans globally and 33% of UK football fans identifying as female, the need for inclusive representation in sports media is clear. Women’s football is exploding yet, in the overwhelmingly white sports journalism landscape, only 4% of coverage focuses on female athletes and 14% of journalists are female. SEASON zine counters this male, pale and sometimes stale state by prioritising women and marginalised communities without sexualising them, and exploring the exciting intersection between fashion and football.”
Sophia Alexandra Hall for Media Toolkit for Journalists and Care Experienced People
“The toolkit provides advice and insight to both journalists and care experienced people. For journalists the toolkit focuses on topics including ‘Empowering your sources’, ‘What to look out for’, ‘Practicing self-care’ and a suggested interview timeline. For care experienced people it focuses on ‘Deciding to share your story’, ‘Questions to ask yourself’, ‘How to write and pitch an opinion piece’, and a suggested interview timeline to follow. The toolkit also gives context of the care system in the UK and includes details of recommended support services and organisations. Since it was published in August 2024 the toolkit has made its way into the newsrooms of BBC, Channel 4, ITV and the Big Issue, to name a few. Various care experienced people have told me they won’t agree to an interview until the journalist reads the toolkit.”
Sophia Smith Galer for Sophina
”When asked about the main barriers, journalists cited time and lack of training. This led me to an idea: what if I could build a tool that significantly reduced the time required to create videos? What if it incorporated strategies for virality, enabling those without TikTok experience to succeed immediately? This is why I built Sophina, my AI chatbot that can help anyone who wants to make the internet a better place make high quality video content that can reach the masses. Sophina combines an LLM with a knowledge base trained on my dataset of 100 successful TikTok video scripts to turn large bodies of text, such as documentary transcripts or newspaper articles, into scripts that are optimised for going viral on social media.”
Lucy Nash for Silenced Stories.
Soon after Lucy Nash joined the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) in 2022, her team was sued over an article. Campaigners believed the case to be a SLAPP - a term which refers to an abusive lawsuit with the aim of suppressing free speech. This led Lucy to join the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition and become deeply involved in the group’s parliamentary advocacy. For the past year, TBIJ has been gathering stories which are in the public interest, but which were spiked, delayed, or significantly altered because of legal threats. This project is known as ‘Silenced Stories’ and entails an innovative way of getting these important stories into the public domain.
