Young Mayo journalist honoured with prestigious bursary award

A TALENTED yong Mayo journalist has been honoured with a bursary award for a series of articles published in The Connaught Telegraph.

Castlebar's Jemima Burke was one of the winners of the award scheme run annually by the Press Council of Ireland and open to all students of media, journalism and communications in universities and colleges.

Jemima, a student of NUI, Galway, shared second place in the prestigious competition.

The subjects of her articles in The Connaught Telegraph were quite disparate, from a Belarusian woman now living in a small village in Mayo, to a young farmer’s hopes for the future, to a retired national school teacher who now offers Irish language classes to adults.

She also wrote about to the role that tennis played in making a Dublin woman feel at home in Castlebar.

All of her featured stories were told in a light and engaging manner with imagination and energy.

The winner of the top prize was Conor McCrave of Dublin City University who was feted for a series of articles he wrote on foster and residential care.

Jemima Burke shared second place with Nikki Murphy of Dublin Institute of Technology for an article she wrote for The Edition, DIT’s student newspaper, on Garda vetting of students participating in an access scheme in the college.

Hayley Roche of Dublin Business School received a commendation for her dissertation in Film Studies on the Mexican director Guillermo del Toro.

Seán Donlon, chairman of the Press Council, said that in spite of the difficulties facing journalism today it was heartening to see so many good students undertaking journalism courses.

He said that the standard of work submitted for the Bursary Awards was impressive and that he looked forward to seeing the winners’ by-lines in years to come.