MUMBAI: NDTV Group executive co chairman Dr Prannoy Roy has been awarded the 2015 RedInk Award for Lifetime Achievement for Excellence in Journalism for his consistent and pioneering contribution to news television in India. Dr Roy will be honoured for his service to journalism at a glittering ceremony on Thursday, 30 April in Mumbai at the Jamshed Bhaba Auditorium, NCPA.
Dr Roy along with his wife and journalist Radhika Roy in 1988, were the first to set up a television news production company called New Delhi Television, now called NDTV. In later years, Dr Roy made a mark for his incisive and pioneering coverage of election news and changed the way people consumed TV news with his ground-breaking programmes such as ‘The News Tonight’ and ‘The World This Week’. After years of producing the news for Star News, Dr Roy launched his own broadcasting network with NDTV 24X7, NDTV India and other channels in 2003. NDTV, one of the largest news networks in the country today, has set up benchmarks for good, ethical and no-frills news coverage.
The RedInk Award for ‘Journalist of the Year’, instituted for the first time, has gone to Sreenivasan Jain of NDTV for his consistent investigative work epitomized in his series ‘Truth versus Hype’ and other programmes. Times Now editor in chief Arnab Goswami was selected as the ‘Impact Editor’ of the Year for his ability to capture eyeballs and expand audience reach with his ‘News Hour’ show. Scroll.in will be awarded the ‘News Start-up of the Year’ for scaling up its influence rapidly as an alternative source of news and features.
Judging for the RedInk Awards, which includes as many as 10 categories have just been completed, and as many as 24 journalists who have produced outstanding and impactful stories in calendar 2014 will also receive awards along with Dr Prannoy Roy, Sreenivasan Jain, Arnab Goswami and Scoll.in on 30 April at the NCPA.
Judging process proved to be a herculean task with over 800 entries in the print/online category and nearly 250 stories from television journalists. Each of the categories – politics, crime, environment, sports, human rights, etc – had a dedicated jury of senior persons with domain knowledge assigned to judge the entries. A special curator was also assigned to sift the large number of entries in each section and guide the judges.
