Guardian Australia has won two mid-year Walkley awards for excellence in journalism for reporter Fleur Connick’s series on rural water quality and contributor Anna Verney’s investigation that found a Miles Franklin-nominated novelist had plagiarised parts of his book.
Connick, a reporter for Guardian Australia’s rural and regional network, won the short-form journalism award for her three stories on how poor water quality in the Murray-Darling River was leading to mass animal and fish kills.
In Connick’s story from last year on the blackwater from floods in Victoria causing mass fish kills, it found the deaths were likely linked to sewage leaks upstream from Echuca.
This was followed by another story that found the two mass fish deaths in Menindee this year had occurred after dissolved oxygen levels in the lower Darling River had fallen well below the mg/L level needed for fish to survive.
In a follow-up story a month later, Connick revealed the water testing by the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority after the fish kill was flawed and insufficient.
Verney took home an award alongside Richard Cooke for Guardian Australia and the Monthly for their investigation that found Australian author John Hughes had copied extracts from some classic texts including The Great Gatsby in parts of his new book, The Dogs.
Verney worked with Guardian Australia culture editor, Steph Harmon, on the investigation which led the Miles Franklin prize to remove Hughes’s novel from its longlist.
Daryna Zadvirna, a reporter at the West Australian, took home three awards for her documentary covering inside the war zone in Ukraine, including young Australian journalist of the year, and the awards for long-form feature and visual story-telling.
“Daryna Zadvirna’s initiative and accomplishment in producing this impactful work by herself greatly impressed the judges,” the Walkey judging board wrote. “She bought a camera, hopped on a plane and went into the Ukrainian war zone on her own accord.
“Despite the heavy subject matter, she threaded hope through her storytelling. Of all the Ukraine reporting the judges had seen, they felt this was unique coverage that was only possible if you spoke the language and had Zadvrina’s access.”
The Walkley Foundation chief executive, Shona Martyn, said the calibre of the entries for the mid-year awards were particularly high this year.
She said this led to two awards being presented for both the Jacoby-Walkley fellowship, to Tatenda Chikwakukire and Kevin Ding, and the Sean Dorney grant for Pacific journalism, to Stefan Armbruster and Marian Faa.
