By Sunday Ani
The Sun Newspaper has emerged as the Best Designed Newspaper of the Year 2023 at the 32nd Diamond Awards for Media Excellence (DAME) in Lagos.
The Daily Trust and ThisDay Newspapers emerged first and second runner-up respectively in the same category.
The award which started in 1991 with eight awards in print journalism, had 23 awards this year in different categories.
The categories were reporting (13), commentary (3), documentary-drama (3), aesthetics (3) and overall awards (3).
The 13 awards in the reporting category were business reporting, child friendly reporting, education reporting, health reporting, Niger Delta development reporting, nutrition reporting, insurance reporting, investigative reporting, judicial reporting, Lagos reporting, sports reporting and television reporting.
The three in the commentary category included editorial cartooning, editorial writing, and informed commentary. Those in documentary-drama were radio drama, television drama, and television documentary.
However, the categories in aesthetics included Best Designed Newspaper, Best Media Website, News Photography, while the three in overall awards were Child Friendly Medium, Newspaper of the Year and Editor of the Year.
Responding, the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of The Sun Publishing Limited, Onuoha Ukeh, expressed joy at the award and promised that The Sun would continue to offer best quality service to its readers.
“This award will spur us to do more and serve our readers better. We will continue to improve on the design and aesthetics of our paper,” he said.
Chief Executive Officer of Diamond Publications Limited, organisers of the awards, Lanre Idowu, said the award is organised yearly to celebrate and appreciate the media.
“We should celebrate the media as an industry, and celebrate the people working in it as professionals because they are doing a very important job,” he said.
He said some categories were stepped down this year because the entries could not meet the laid down standards of the DAME prize.
The founding chairman of ThisDay/Arise Media Group, Nduka Obaigbena, was also honoured with the Lifetime Achievement award, while Mike Awoyinfa and Emeka Izeze equally received the honorary fellows.
The DAME, meant to enhance professionalism and reward handwork, is a Nigerian version of the Pulitzer Prize for Media Excellence in the United States of America.