Dar es Salaam. 17 writers from Mwananchi Communications Limited (MCL) are among the 72 nominees who will compete for the excellence in journalism awards (Ejat) provided by the Tanzania News Council (MCT).
Among the 72 writers who will participate in the competition on September 28, 2024, 45 men are equal to 62.5 percent and 27 women are equal to 37.5 percent.
Speaking to journalists today, Thursday September 19, 2024, the Executive Secretary of MCT, Ernest Sungura said that among the nominees, 14 are from television, 13 are from online media, 20 are radio and 25 nominees are from newspapers.
“The nominees have been found by meeting quality criteria which include truth, accuracy, variety, justice, depth, research, creativity, innovation, uniqueness, analysis, responsibility, disclosure of evil, integrity, understandable presentation and investigation,” said Sungura.
He also said that specific criteria were used based on different types of media such as radio, television, newspapers and online news.
The competition to identify the first, second and third winners and the overall winner for 20 groups will be held in front of the Speaker of the Parliament of Tanzania, Dr. Tulia Ackson who will be the official guest.
In addition to the awarding of the awards, the Minister of Information, Communications and Information Technology, Jerry Silaa will launch the Award Journal and Award Magazine which are focused on encouraging excellence in various sectors in Tanzania and outside Tanzania.
The magazines, one of which will be in English and the other in Kiswahili, will carry the content of the Tanzania Journalism Excellence Awards (EJAT) where one of the contents in both magazines is a narrative of the lives of all the nominees.
“The work of writing those narratives starts today, so all the nominees should be ready to be reached by the writers of Jarida la Tuzo any time from now. The other content is for award sponsors whose stories will be about their contribution to changing people's lives, including promoting and building the information industry,” said Sungura.
Apart from that, Sungura has said for the first time that the journalist jobs for EJAT 2023 have increased to 1,135 from 893 jobs for EJAT 2022. EJAT in 2020 were 396 jobs and EJAT 2021 jobs were 608.
In these works, the journalists of the Dar es Salaam Region have led by presenting 290 works, followed by Arusha which had 81 works, Mwanza 74 works, Iringa took fourth place with 72 works.
“At that time, Mtwara Region ranked fifth for having 49 jobs. As for Zanzibar, the jobs received are from North Pemba (36), South Pemba (43) and Mjini West (29),” said Sungura.
Apart from the other names mentioned, from Mwananchi those who were appointed are Jacob Mosenda, Julius Maricha, Eliya Solomon, Zourha Malisa, Harrieth Makwetta and George Helahela.
Others are Elizabeth Edward, Pamela Chilongola, Ephraim Bahemu, Kelvin Matandiko, Haika Kimaro, Yohanna Challe, Mgongo Kaitira, Imani Makongoro, Salome Gregory, Anna Potnus and Hellen Nachilongo.
Speaking about the appointment, the Head of the Training Division from MCL, Rashid Kejo said the number of appointed writers is not random, but is based on effective strategies set by the company.
These strategies, which involved various stakeholders, were aimed at building writers to be able to produce various content that aims to empower the community as the company's motto says 'We empower the Nation'.
“In that, we focused on giving them training that aims to produce content that empowers the Nation, we have written and brought results, fortunately, journalistic work seems to be like football,” said Kejo and added;
“It is very encouraging to see the efforts made by writers in collaboration with editors bear fruit.”
In the meeting with the writers, Sungura notes that in the near future, MCT is thinking of starting to do its activities digitally by starting to monitor the writers and the work they do, to ensure that the available leader has the ability to compete with the writers of other countries.
That is due to the existence of the behavior of some writers who do good work that brought a great debate, but do not want to send their work voluntarily.
“This even made the judges question some of the works that they saw had criteria, but were not submitted. Through this method we will be able to recognize them, the time will come when we will be recognizing writers who do well every week, month, three months and later who did well for the whole year,” said Sungura and added;
“Doing this will also make us sure that the winners are professionals to compete internationally,” he said.
Speaking about the work done, the Chairperson of the Panel of Judges, Halima Sharrif said that the work was done in accordance with the set criteria.
