It's easy to sneer at the Canon Media Awards, especially when the journalists you like don't win (or aren't even nominated), and that columnist you hate picks up award after award.And yeah, there are always some weird omissions, or baffling rewards. And yeah, sometimes the annual awards can be a venue for some stunning displays of hypocrisy, (a particularly wimpy and whiny member of the Media Scrum team still moans about being traumatised by his last visit to the awards, and the vast and terrible amount of bullshit he had to scoff that night).
But fuck it, it's also a cracker of a night, because unless you're a totally miserable git like our Steve, it's a chance for journalists to celebrate their profession, and meet up with old mates, and get totally fucking rotten on the ample mounts of booze. No other fucker ever has a nice word to say about the media, but they can't stop us saying good things about ourselves.
So while any accusations that the awards are a total circle-jerk certainly have a basis in truth, every goddamn industry likes to celebrate itself, and recognise its achievements, and pay tribute to the best.
And there is some astonishing talent in the nominees announced this week – articles and series that were genuinely cutting-edge journalism, papers that have proven their worth in a multi-media world over and over again, and websites that are invaluable sources of breaking news, analysis and context.
They are stories that have exposed injustice, and unfairness, and demanded accountability. They're stories about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. They're stories about huge, important world events, and about small, devastating personal impacts. And they're stories with some fucking great photographs.
There are, of course, the usual puzzling omissions in this year's Canons, but if anything, the number of nominees could be doubled for almost every category, and there wouldn't be a noticeable drop in overall quality. Even as the industry has been systemically decimated over the past few years, there is still a huge amount of great journalism out there, and more every day.
We could write post after post about how much good reporting is going out there – and we certainly haven't been shy about saying it in the past – but if you want a good primer for just some of the brilliant work of the past year, just look at the Canon list.
Everybody in the Media Scrum team – including the wimp who gets queasy at the thought of attending another ceremony – wants to congratulate all the nominees in all the categories. Even if they don't win the actual prizes, their contributions to the big, messy and beautiful media scene in the country over the past year deserve to be recognised, and it's good to see that they have been.
-Katherine Grant
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