Celebrating DAME Awards at 25

BY FEMI BABATUNDE

This year, the Diamond Awards for Media Excellence (DAME), a not-for-profit organisation that rewards media excellence in Nigeria marks its Silver Jubilee. Since 1992 when the award, dubbed in some quarters as Nigeria’s version of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize, debuted till now, Trustees of DAME have inducted 475 outstanding journalists, advertising professional and media organisations into its hallowed hall of fame. Other outstanding media professionals will join this privileged rank this Sunday, 4th December at the Lagos Oriental Hotel, Lekki.

DAME organisers deserve thumb-ups for holding on this past 25 years. For this is no mean feat, especially going by the widespread reckoning by professionals in the industry that pitches DAME as a cherished prize, owing to its largely unblemished run these past years.

For the record, DAME has held its awards year in year out without fail for the past 25 years. From its humble beginning, it has grown in stature as Africa’s longest-running and consistent media awards programme. Not only does it provide an authentic platform to assess media performance, reflect on progress made, it continues to serve as a reunion for media professionals and consumers of media messages.

It is indeed very heartwarming that the organizers have managed, very admirably, to sustain the integrity of the awards, without pandering to the compromise that often plague such laudable enterprise in this part of the world. Perhaps, this is traceable to the fact that the directing minds at DAME are distinguished media professionals with proven track records. Theirs indeed is a delightful labour of love for the industry.

DAME is run by a board of trustees that includes media professionals and veterans, and funded by individuals and organizations that believe in a strong, free and responsible media. Aside the annual awards ceremony, the organisation equally lends its hands to the retooling of journalists. Its notable efforts include “Widening the Pools of Excellence” training to intimate journalists with new challenges in reporting and deepen their news judgment; Election Reporting workshops and the recently held five-city conflict sensitivity training for defence correspondents and security spokespersons under a grant from the National Stability and Reconciliation Programme (NSRP) and support from the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) held from October 2014 till January 2016.

One would recall that when DAME first launched out in 1992, as a complementary product to Media Review, a critical monthly assessor of the media, not many pundits thought it could come this far,  though its entry was deemed very timely and useful.  In truth, their fear was not unfounded. For, in an industry where the mortality rate of enterprises ranks high, it is sheer genius that its organisers have survived.

In Diamonds Are Forever, a 10th DAME commemorative publication, Lanre Idowu, Editor-in-chief of Media Review who also doubles as a Trustee of DAME, offered a glimpse of the conviction behind the DAME project: “We remain convinced that there is something in the human nature that yearns for recognition and appreciates being singled out of the crowd for positive contribution to society … The professionals in media in general and journalists in particular needed such recognition to improve public perception of their role and their place. For long perceived as ethically unscrupulous, we felt a humanistic programme such as DAME would go a long way in reassuring media professionals that their vocations were as important as others and that they have a critical role to play in nation building.”

At 25, DAME affords us the immeasurable opportunity to reflect on the place of media awards in journalism practice in the country and indeed the state of the media in Nigeria.

Unlike what it was years ago when DAME courageously chose to pioneer, the industry is now blessed to have quite a number of media awards rewarding different works. As at the last check, there are quite a number of media awards in the industry today, with even a number of them catering for select industry needs.

It is trite to say that in many ways, the plurality of media awards has done much to stimulate healthy competition in the media and also encouraged journalists in the country to volunteer their best to their craft, convinced that there are platforms dedicated to rewarding journalistic execellence.

On the other hand, the media industry in Nigeria today has come a long way. However, realities in the industry suggest that there is an urgent need for media leaders to take stocks and seek ways of reinventing the industry.

Obtainable realities show that the industry today is seriously hemorrhaging. Burdening cost of news production coupled with the embarrassing magnitude of salary indebtedness by many notable media titles, increasing commercialization of news items and declining adherence to ethical standards, just to mention a few are daily crippling the industry. When you add this to declining readership and the losses incurred by many organisations, owing to the revolutionary incursion of the online media and the acute reduction in the purchasing power of readers, one needs no soothsayer to say the industry is in urgent need to reinvent itself.

There is indeed no better time for media leaders to take responsibility for salvaging the industry than now.

*Babatunde, a journalist, tweets @ofemipo.