Catherine Fegan of the Irish Daily Mail and The Irish Mail on Sunday was named as NewsBrands Ireland Journalist of the Year for 2017 at the annual Journalism Awards which were held in the Mansion House, Dublin yesterday, Thursday, November 1.
The award caps a good year for the journalist who also won the 2017 Features (Popular) category for her reporting on stories including road safety in Donegal and budget cuts in the HSE. It is the first time the Irish Daily Mail has won the top prize in the annual Journalism Awards, held by NewsBrands Ireland in association with the National Lottery.
The 2017 Journalist of the Year was presented with her award by Vincent Crowley, Chairperson of NewsBrands Ireland, special guest Denis Naughton TD, Minister for Communications, Climate Action and the Environment, and former Irish Farmer’s Journal editor Matt Dempsey, who chaired this year’s independent judging panel.
The overall award, said Mr Dempsey, went to a journalist who is “equally at home in rural Ireland, with loyalists in Portadown, with those who care for people with severe mental health issues, in Trump’s America, or with a notebook in a courtroom. [Catherine Fegan] knows that the gravest sin for a journalist is to make the important boring, and she brings to her writing rigour with the best of good storytelling”.
This year’s Journalism Awards – sponsored for the second year by the National Lottery – received 1,400 individual entries – the biggest entry ever. To assess the work submitted, NewsBrands Ireland assembled a new independent judging panel comprising high-profile media figures from both inside and outside the newspaper industry.
In addition to the overall Journalist of the Year prize, a total of 25 category awards were presented at today’s ceremony including News, Sport, Business, Crime, Foreign Coverage, Investigative Journalism, Digital Excellence, Showbiz, Political Coverage, Young, and Regional Journalist of the Year.
According to Judging Panel Chairman Matt Dempsey, the jury was impressed with the overall quality of work submitted, in particular the role of journalism in exposing high-profile national scandals relating to Garda breath test data, charity organisation funding and the National Maternity Hospital.
The full list of 2017 winners are as follows:
Business Journalist of the Year
Jack Horgan-Jones, Sunday Business Post
Business Story of the Year
John Meagher, Irish Independent
Columnist (Broadsheet)
Fintan O’Toole, The Irish Times
Columnist (Popular)
Lynda McCarthy, Sunday World
Crime Journalist
Michael O’Toole, Irish Daily Star
Crime Story
Michael O’Toole, Irish Daily Star
Critic
Patrick Freyne, The Irish Times
Digital Excellence
The Irish Times Abroad, Ciara Kenny
Features (Broadsheet)
Conor Lally, The Irish Times
Features (Popular)
Catherine Fegan, Irish Daily Mail & The Irish Mail on Sunday
Foreign Coverage
Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, The Irish Times
Front page
Irish Daily Mirror ‘What Have They Done’
Headline
Irish Daily Star ‘Quarter Pounder with Sleaze’
Investigative Journalism
Michael O’Farrell, The Irish Mail On Sunday
News Analysis
Daniel McConnell & Fiachra Ó Cionnaith, Irish Examiner
News Reporter
Conor Feehan, The Herald
Political Journalist of the Year
John Lee, The Irish Mail on Sunday
Political Story of the Year
Ellen Coyne, Ireland Edition of the Times
Scoop
David Labanyi, The Irish Times
Showbiz Journalist of the Year
Ken Sweeney, The Irish Sun
Showbiz story of the year
Nadine O’ Regan, Sunday Business Post
Sports Journalist of the Year
Malachy Clerkin, The Irish Times
Sports Story of the Year
Martin Breheny, Irish Independent
Young Journalist of the Year
Niall O’ Connor, Irish Independent
Local Ireland Regional Journalist of the Year
Sorcha Crowley, Sligo Champion
Overall Journalist of the Year 2017
Catherine Fegan, Irish Daily Mail & The Irish Mail on Sunday
