Mildura Weekly 23/11/12 5www.thelocalphonebook.com.au

THE Mildura Weekly has taken out the top award for Overall Newspaper Excellence, circu-lation 10,000 and over, at the 2012 Victoria Country Press Association annual awards presentation night, making it back-to-back wins for the newspaper.

The award presentations, held in Geelong and featuring a whos who of government, media and business leaders, was a dream result for the Mildura Weekly, with further recognition in the Awards for Journalism category, along with journalist Vinnie Rodi being named the Deakin Uni-versity and Edward Wilson Trusts Most Outstanding Year 3 Regional Journalist, recog-nised with a certificate plus $3000 cash.

The award was held in conjunction with Country Press Australia, with Vinnies success, in a field of 88 Austra-lia-wide, following three years of self-study assignments through Deakin University in Melbourne in the wake of his Bachelor of Journalism Degree from the University of SA.

The three-year Deakin

University course embraces all aspects of journalism, includ-ing general writing, features, sub-editing, photography and analytical insights into the media industry, and aims to further equip developing journalists with the skills they need to excel.

Vinnie accepted the award from Robert McKay, chairman of the Edward Wilson Trust, at the VCPA awards dinner at The Pier restaurant in Gee-long, which was also attended by Mildura Weekly general manager Stuart Mensch, edi-

tor Alan Erskine and senior writer/sub-editor Grant May-nard.

Mr Mensch said the Week-ly board of directors, staff, stakeholders and advertisers could be proud of the news-papers latest achievements, coming on top of last years top award, as well as individ-ual Australia-wide honours in journalism earlier this year.

It is effectively the most significant award on offer through the VCPA, incorpo-rating all aspects of publish-ing, from editorial content,

layouts, advertising designs, use of colours and classified advertising, he said.

To win such an award once is a great achievementto win it two years in a row is absolutely fantastic.

While the main focus of the Mildura Weekly has al-ways been to present a quality weekly product that hopefully is widely accepted by advertis-ers and readers, its extremely gratifying to be recognised with awards such as these, es-pecially considering the qual-ity of the competition.

Having recently entered our seventh year in business, it makes us even more deter-mined not to rest on our lau-rels, and maintain the highest possible standard, both in advertising and editorial con-tent.

The award for Overall Newspaper Excellence, spon-sored by Goss International, was this year judged by Mr Graham Gorrel, who has 50 years of media experience in the media, nationally and internationally, as a writer, editor and newspaper consul-tant. Since his retirement in 2003, Mr Gorrel has judged

newspaper and journalism awards throughout NSW, SA and Victoria.

At a time when many critics in other media are sug-gesting the demise of newspa-pers, it was a pleasure to judge entries of such high quality across four disciplines, he said.

The overall standard of the 21 entries, especially the exceptional final 11, made it difficult to decide a winner, and the quality of advertis-ing and editorial from final-ists was nothing short of out-standing.

Mr Gorrel described the Mildura Weekly as having an exciting mix of Page One stories, depth of general news pages, innovative photo-graphs and eye-catching ad-vertisements.

It made this entry a con-vincing winner in a high-class field, he said. The editorial departments ability to pro-duce a good read about local people, events and controver-sy was unsurpassed.

Mr Gorrel was particularly impressed with the popular Chaff page, which he de-scribed as one of the best col-

umns he had ever judged in any State. It makes this news-paper a benchmark for others to reach, he said.

The newspaper topped my judging in all four disci-plinesan outstanding news-paper in all respects.

The Mildura Weekly nar-rowly missed another award, this time in the Award for Jour-nalism category, picking up a high commendation from judge Dr Katrina Oakham, se-nior lecturer in journalism at RMIT University, with senior journalist Ben Piscioneri rat-ing a special mention for his on-the-ground reporting.

The VCPA conference was a real eye-opener for those attending See Page 9.

There was hot competition from leading regional newspapers across the State at the annual Victorian Country Press Association awards in Geelong last week, and it was a case of

Back-to-back wins for Mildura Weekly

WIN-WIN:MilduraWeeklygeneralmanagerStuartMensch,ABOVE,with

theawardfornewspaperexcellenceandLEFT,

journalistVinnieRodireceiveshisawardfromchairmanoftheEdwardWilsonTrust,

RobertMcKay.