I was at the Foreign Press Association media awards last night. The FPA is the organisation for all non-UK journalists working in the UK, and has been around since 1888 (same as Celtic Football Club…) which makes it the oldest such organisation in the world, they say. The awards recognised excellence in UK foreign reporting as well as the best reporting done by FPA members. As media outlets cut staff, this office’s role in liaising with press from around the world, not just the UK, becomes ever more important, as staff will often get cut from Brussels before London. Talking to people last night I realised that it has become a small but significant part of what we do.
There were some really interesting issues among the prize-winners, including corruption in WFP deliveries in Somalia and abuse of women in Chechnya. The overall winner was Martin Hickman of the Independent writing about palm oil. I’ve sat on juries giving two journalism prizes this year and in both instances they were given to journalists writing for the Independent. Martin won last night. This does beg the question: where is the Independent going wrong? It clearly has journalists of quality, writing on issues of interest and merit. So why does it have the biggest losses in readership of any newspaper? Answers on a postcard.
The keynote speech was given by Prince Felipe of Asturias, the Crown Prince of Spain. He highlighted the intricacies of the UK/Spanish relationship. I have to say that I did not know that Spanish companies invest more in the UK than in the whole of Latin America. He said that Spanish is the third language of the internet (not a huge surprise) but what was surprising was that in terms of number of pages (not users) the second language is…German!