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All set for Journalists’ Awards Night: Five veterans to be feted
View(s):The 14th edition of the Journalism Awards for Excellence programme will culminate with the annual ‘Awards Night’ on Tuesday, July 30 at the Empire Ballroom of the Mount Lavinia Hotel, the host hotel for the gala event. A record number of 310 entries were received for the 2012 Awards.
 Dunstan Wickramaratne |
 Camillus Perera |
 Carol Aloysius |
 Senadhira Piyasena |
 Nagalingam Pathmaseelan |
The event — which was launched in 1999 by The Editors’ Guild of Sri Lanka and now organised by The Guild in partnership with the Sri Lanka Press Institute — is the biggest media awards programme in the country. The aim of the programme is to recognise professionalism in the print media of Sri Lanka and reward excellence over a particular year.
It also honours those who have served the journalistic profession for more than 45 years with Lifetime Achievement Awards. Overseas scholarships are also offered for young reporters together with the Lakshman Kadirgamar Foundation.
Veteran journalist and Editor Edmund Ranasinghe is the chief guest at today’s event. Mr. Ranasinghe entered journalism at the age of 21 in both, the Sinhala and English language newspapers at Lake House. He later became Group Editor at Upali Newspapers Ltd., and a director of the company. Mr. Ranasinghe has authored several books and retired in 2000 after mentoring an entire breed of journalists, many of whom are editors of national newspapers today.
The recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Awards this year:
Senadhira Piyasena is a product of the University of Calcutta who started his career in journalism in 1942 as an editor of the Communist Party organ, Janashakthi. He later joined Dinamina published by the Lake House Group and was parliamentary reporter for the Sunday Observer. He worked in Radio Ceylon, All India Radio, Davasa and as chief editorial executive at Times of Ceylon before becoming press secretary to President J.R. Jayewardene. He has also written several books.
Dunstan Wickramaratne is a well-known photographer who started working in his father’s studio in Galle and then became a provincial correspondent for Davasa in 1962 under the legendary editor D.B. Dhanapala. He went on to join the staff of the Sun and Weekend newspapers, publications of Independent Newspapers Ltd. In 1990 he joined the Sunday Times as pictures editor and retired as consultant editor (pictures) in 2009.
Nagalingam Pathmaseelan, the editor of Sudar Oli, counts 46 years in active journalism, He began his professional career as a reporter at Dinapathy and became the chief sub-editor of Chinthamany before being appointed editor of Thanthi, an evening daily – all published by Independent Newspapers Ltd. With the founding of Uthayan in Jaffna in 1985, he joined the newspaper as news editor and became assistant editor.
When Sudar Oli published by the same Uthayan Group being launched in Colombo he was appointed acting editor and later editor.
Carol Rohini Aloysius began her career in journalism in 1969 with the Evening Observer and Sunday Observer published by the Lake House Group after graduating from the University of Peradeniya. She held the posts of Women’s page assistant, Children’s page editor, Health page editor and became the features editor and associate editor of the two newspapers.
She joined The Nation and later returned to the Sunday Observer. She is a Fellow of the University of Michigan and is the recipient of the Dart Asia-Pacific Fellowship in Trauma and Violence and a host of local awards for reporting on health issues.
Camillus Perera, a well-known cartoonist began his career at Lake House in 1964 as a pocket cartoonist for Sarasaviya, Two years later, he moved to Davasa where he drew the character ‘Thepanis’. He re-joined Lake House and launched ‘Don Sethang’ for Janatha from where he joined Lankadeepa and Daily Mirror in the former Times of Ceylon.
In 1967, he created the popular ‘Siribiris’ cartoon in Silumina followed by ‘Dakkoth Padmawathie’ in the Sarasaviya Weekly and ‘Mister Lovaris’ in the Sunday Observer. In 1972, he started his own comic weekly Sathuta and introduced the ‘Gajaman’ cartoons. He launched his own publishing house in 1986 with the comic publications, Sathsiri, Gajaman and Hapana. He currently contributes to the Rivira group.
The Editors’ Guild also presents two special awards by its own nomination at the event; the D.R. Wijewardene Award for Recognition by Peers and the Public and the Sepala Gunasena Award for Defending Press Freedom in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka Telecom and John Keels Holding are the Gold sponsors of the Award ceremony while among the Bronze sponsors are, People’s Bank and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority.
The other sponsors are: Bank of Ceylon, SriLankan Airlines, Colombo Stock Brokers Association, Colombo Dockyard and the newspaper industry.
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