At an awards ceremony at Johannesburg’s Summer Place in Sandton on Wednesday night, television producer Bronwyn Nielsen won the 2006 Telkom ICT Journalist of the Year award.
Nielsen, who produced a programme for M-Net’s Carte Blanche about South Africa’s high telecommunications costs, also toppled the competition in the television category.
“Nielsen brilliantly used the medium of television to capture interest and attention despite the subject matter being oft reported,” the judges said.
Nielsen won a R40 000 cash prize as well as an all-expenses-paid trip to an international telecommunications conference.
The event was the seventh annual awards ceremony. It is aimed at encouraging and rewarding excellence in ICT journalism and to stimulate interest in the ICT industry.
Winners in the other six categories won price money of up to R15 000 for their contributions.
The Financial Mail‘s Duncan McLeod, overall winner of last year’s awards, said the awards have become much sought after among ICT journalists. “The awards are credible and are contributing to the improvement of ICT reporting,” he stated.
The entries were judged by Rhodes University’s Guy Berger, Hewlett-Packard’s Thoko Mokgosi-Mwantembe, the University of the Witwatersrand’s Lucienne Abrahams and the Mail & Guardian Online’s Vincent Maher.