Nguyen Luong Bang Journalism Award: 20 years of "panning for gold"

Provincial leaders with leaders of press agencies and authors who won the first Nguyen Luong Bang Press Award of Hai Duong province (1996-2000). Photo courtesy

The Nguyen Luong Bang Journalism Award is named after the famous soldier, revolutionary activist, Vice President Nguyen Luong Bang, a native of Hai Duong, founder of Cong Nong newspaper, the first revolutionary newspaper in Hai Duong. This is the highest journalism award of the province for outstanding journalistic works about Hai Duong.

Over the past 20 years, with 5 awards, the Nguyen Luong Bang Journalism Award has had nearly 600 authors and groups of authors in the province and outside the province submitting 618 entries in 4 categories including reflection, political commentary, news, and press photos. The press works are awarded according to each category. Most of the entries to the Nguyen Luong Bang Journalism Award are of good quality, deeply reflecting the difficulties, obstacles, highlights, and thorny aspects of social life, negative phenomena in many fields, and receiving special attention from public opinion. Many works mention the process of construction, development, and innovation of Hai Duong in particular and the country in general, associated with each period. Along with that are a series of press works that breathe life, reflect the positive aspects, honor typical advanced collectives and individuals, encourage and motivate the social community to promote and expand good values, creating a foundation and strength in the cause of innovation.

Not only is the content rich, the form of expression of the works submitted to the Nguyen Luong Bang Journalism Awards over the years is also quite diverse. Notably, the types of reportage, radio-television talk shows, memoirs, reports, reflections, essays, editorials, news, photos, etc. have been invested in by the authors. Among them, the investigative reportage type dominates the total number of works that won high prizes.

One thing worth noting is that the authors participating in the award are increasingly younger. Out of nearly 600 authors participating in 5 editions of the Nguyen Luong Bang Journalism Award, 97 authors are under 35 years old, nearly 300 authors are under 45 years old, accounting for 51% of the total number of participating authors. This shows that the award has a strong attraction for young journalists, demonstrating the spirit of serious work and the desire to contribute creativity of young people.

Many young authors are committed to having their works participate in the Nguyen Luong Bang Journalism Award.

Each award period also shows the growth, maturity, and professionalism of the journalism team, the harmonious coordination of press agencies, the increase in the number of works, and the diversity of genres and topics. Many works have reflected the pressing issues in life, sounding the alarm bell for society. Many issues have been pursued by reporters, accumulating data, collecting evidence for a long time, with the labor of the whole team, ensuring timeliness. After posting and broadcasting, authorities at all levels and functional agencies have stepped in to resolve them, the Central press has also expanded its investigation, creating a wave of public opinion, a very valuable source of information to protect the people, protect the right, eliminate evil, negativity, and strengthen people's trust.

Through each award period, each author and group of authors are tested, overcome themselves, affirm themselves, their roles, responsibilities and missions as journalists... Many authors who have won high prizes have now become famous and successful journalists, holding important positions at major provincial and central press agencies.

However, the Nguyen Luong Bang Journalism Award also has certain limitations. Some authors have not actively gone deep, closely followed the grassroots, and lacked strategic planning for investment in higher quality journalistic works, so the works submitted to the award are sketchy and the way of expression is monotonous. There are few works with major topics in the award. The political genre has not had many authors participating. Radio works have a sharp decline. The news and photojournalism genres are also few and lack worthy works, not accurately and fully reflecting the strength, advantages, and potential of these genres.

In the coming time, to improve the quality of the award, it requires journalists in Dong province and professional and non-professional journalists interested in Hai Duong to invest in further improving their skills, closely following the life of the grassroots to have articles that are rich in current events and highly combative. New journalism genres that are suitable for the development trend of the 4.0 era also need to continue to be invested in and implemented. Weak and lacking journalism genres when participating in the award need to be invested in by press agencies. In particular, journalists need to have many works that are oriented, proactive, and proactive to influence policy-making agencies, providing appropriate solutions and sustainable development.

As each Nguyen Luong Bang Journalism Award season passes, and the laurel wreath is awarded to a deserving person, journalists who care about Hai Duong have more motivation to strive on the journey to fulfill their mission as "soldiers on the ideological-cultural front".

NGUYEN MINH HUNG
Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee, Chairman of the Press Award Council Nguyen Luong Bang