The Citizen’s journalists are celebrating a number of wins from the 2021 Ossie Awards for best student journalism, including the award for best innovation in journalism for our podcast ‘Uncurated: Unpacking Australia’s Hidden Histories‘.

The award, part of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia, recognised Angus Thomson, Clancy Balen, Nell Gereats and our Advanced Audio students for their “near flawless” work on the 7-part podcast series.

Centre for Advancing Journalism senior lecturer Dr Louisa Lim was also celebrated for her role in driving the creation of the Uncurated podcast, taking home the award for outstanding teaching in a journalism project.

Among the other award-winners was current student and The Weekly Times reporter Else Kennedy who won the Our Watch category for reporting on gender-based violence for her series published with The Guardian on soaring domestic violence cases during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recent graduate and regular writer for Cosmos Magazine Amalyah Hart won the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub prize for best climate change reporting for her story ‘Seared into country and memory, lessons for a fiery future‘. The judges commented that Amalyah’s story was a “masterly piece of climate writing. The lyrical writing style blends seamlessly with accessible scientific explanations”.

Amalyah was also highly commended in the John Newfong prize for reporting on Indigenous affairs for her story published in Cosmos Magazine ‘The fight for the Martuwarra‘.

Zoe Stinson, a current student, took home the award for best audio story above two minutes for her 5-part podcast Andrew. The podcast is a personal story about grief, facing head on the loss of her father.

Freelance photojournalist and current student Sandra Sanders won the award for best photojournalism for her story, soon to be published in Australian Geographic, ‘To the rescue: Melbourne’s kangaroos in crisis and the community who save them’.

Recent graduate Anthony Marsico was highly commended in the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma category for his story ‘Beyond the rough and tumble: The hidden casualties of sibling violence‘.

Petra Stock was also highly commended in the Investigative Journalism category for her timely reporting for The Citizen and The Age on security concerns around online learning platforms used by Melbourne school students during the long pandemic lockdowns. Petra is also one of two of our masters students who are finalists for the 2021 Democracy’s Watchdogs award for Student Investigative Journalism. The other is Vanessa Di Natale. The winner will be announced on Friday 10 December.

Reuben Spargo of Charles Sturt University won top honours at this year’s Ossie Awards, winning student journalist of the year. The Citizen’s journalists won the award the previous two year’s running, with Clare Capel-Stanley winning the title in 2019 and Jess Malcom in 2020.