The Graham Perkin Award - Australian Journalist of the Year
March 20, 2009: Cameron Stewart, from The Australian, was named the 2008 winner of the Graham Perkin Award for Australian Journalist of the Year.
The award, which is sponsored by The Age, was announced at the Melbourne Press Club Quill Awards dinner held at the Crown Palladium. The Graham Perkin Award for journalistic excellence was instituted in 1976 as a memorial to the late editor of The Age (1966-1975). Daniel Sankey, one of the judges on this year’s judging panel, presented Cameron Stewart with the winner’s plaque and a cheque for $20,000.
The judging panel, Daniel Sankey, Frances Kelly and Les Carlyon, said of Cameron Stewart and his work:
“We felt Cameron’s stories during 2008 stamped him as the sort of journalist every editor would want to own. His work took him from gloomy alleys in Tibet to a prison in country Victoria, from the fusty halls of Melbourne’s Athenaeum Club to gangsters’ haunts in Brunswick.
He also broke stories that brought about changes in air safety and defence. He wrote page-one exclusives, a string of high-class features, and four cover stories, all highly readable and nicely paced, for the Weekend Australian Magazine. In all, it was an astonishing body of work for one calendar year, yet the quality never dimmed.
His writing is engaging and authoritative. He can apply a light touch in the right place, and is particularly good at setting up a scene and capturing a mood.
Cameron Stewart is clearly a journalist of great determination and range. As Chris Mitchell, his editor-in-chief, said in support of Cameron’s entry:
“His journalistic enterprise and leadership have never been more evident than during 2008 … almost all of Cameron’s work is self-generated – they are his ideas and his initiatives.”
We think Cameron Stewart is the sort of journalist Graham Perkin would have valued.”
The judges also awarded a High Commendation to Patrick Smith of The Australian. The judges said: “We were taken with his limpid prose, his wit and courage, and his disdain for cliché. We were impressed too that he was so often ahead of the news in his sports commentaries.”
Media enquiries:
Miranda Ramsay
Communications manager
The Age
0409 256 764
Release Date: 20 Mar 2009 00:00
