You may put this down to sour grapes if you wish but, after ten years of writing what I am frequently told is one of the best read columns in the Sunday Times, I have never won an award for journalism. I was once a finalist in the Mondi awards for something I wrote for Style magazine and received a beautifully framed certificate which I removed before giving the frame away as a birthday present. What sort of person puts up a certificate in their guest toilet announcing to all and sundry that they didn’t win a Mondi award?
Part of the reason for my lack of honour and distinction in this noble industry of ours is due to my complete ignorance of the rules. Like a complete prat, I thought that those who took home the golden nib of excellence and the R8000 prize money had been hand-picked from the swirling maelstrom of South African journalistic talent. I didn’t realise that they had, more often than not, nominated themselves and sent off a cheque for a few hundred rand per entry in the hopes that they might at least get a mention in dispatches if not a cash prize. That’s not a competition for journalistic excellence; that’s a bloody lottery. If the organisers of the Mondi awards don’t know who writes proper and who don’t then obviously they isn’t reading enough!
But, jokes aside, it’s pretty pathetic when a writer has to enter his or her own work to be recognised. Vodacom launched a rival journalism award last year and I combed through their website to search for the “columnist” category but there wasn’t one. Vodacom apparently don’t know the difference between a columnist and a journalist and, worse still, they don’t seem to care. Anyway, I didn’t bother to enter in any category because the entry form was too intimidating. Apart from having to send copies of the original work, fill in a huge form, attach photos and give a DNA sample, you also had to answer stupid questions like “What motivated you to write the piece”? Try money.
But just say I could be bothered to send in a sample of my work plus a fat cheque to the Mondi judges.what chance have I got of winning? That depends very much on the judges, doesn’t it? And you can’t tell me that personal prejudice plays no part. Being judged by your peers may be all very well in a court of law but when it comes to traditionally bitchy activities like wine-making or writing then surely the consumer should be the judge of what is best. For example, I notice that my Sunday Times colleague Phylicia Oppelt is now a Mondi judge. Phylicia is known affectionately as the “Tracy Chapman of prose”. Her popular weekly column in the newspaper reminds readers that, despite nine years of democracy, life’s cup remains half empty as opposed to half full. Will the melancholic Phylicia look kindly upon a chirpy piece, however well written, by a privileged white boy on the delights of hiring a private yacht in the Aegean? I somehow doubt it.
Like so many other industry awards, the Mondi awards charade has become much too “luvvie” to be taken seriously as a measure of journalistic excellence because of the blatantly commercial way in which it is organised; no entry fee, no award. What South African journalism needs is a credible award which gives everybody a fair chance of winning by not demanding an entrance fee and by allowing the final decision to be made by those who really know what they’re talking about.the reading public.