Newshub reporters have won in several major categories at the 2022 Voyager Media Awards including Best Reporting - General and Political Journalist of the Year.
Patrick Gower, Jenna Lynch, Mihingarangi Forbes, Tova O'Brien, Laura Tupou and Finn Hogan have won for work published with Newshub in 2021.
Sarah Bristow, Senior Director of News at Warner Bros Discovery ANZ, said: "We're incredibly proud of our winners and their relentless commitment to bringing New Zealanders the very best news and current affairs. Their achievements are testament to the incredible talent in our Newshub team."
Hundreds of people gathered for a black tie event at The Great Room at Cordis, Auckland on Saturday night to honour Aotearoa's best journalism of the past year.
There was a total of 277 finalists with 59 award winners announced live during the 49th annual New Zealand Media Awards.
Newshub's 2022 Voyager Media Awards winners are as follows:
- Best Reporting - General: Patrick Gower
- Best Reporting - Māori Affairs: Mihingarangi Forbes
- Political Journalist of the Year: Jenna Lynch
- Broadcast Reporter of the Year: Tova O'Brien
- Best Podcast - Episodic/Recurrent: Finn Hogan with Hannah Brown, Sam Harvey and Ben O'Connor for Supplementary Question
- Best Breaking News Video: Laura Tupou
- Caley Callahan also claimed runner up in the category of Best Junior Reporter.
The judges commended Gower's work on the They Are Us film script and anti-vax GP Dr Jonie Girouard, congratulating him for "great story-getting, empathetic people skills, strong technical craft and a flair for telling a good yarn".
"It is absolutely awesome to get an award for these stories that are among the most important I have worked on in my career," said Gower.
"These stories all brought change, and that is what we want to do as journalists. I am so proud of everybody from Newshub that helped me break them, and getting recognised among our peers is a really special moment."
On being named Aotearoa's Political Journalist of the Year, Lynch said: "It’s a huge honour to be recognised in a field stacked with friends and powerhouses of journalism that I respect and admire beyond words."
The judges said podcast Supplementary Question had a "really simple but effective format which works well in the podcast space".
Hogan called winning the award "a huge honour".
"Politics can sometimes be inscrutable or just plain boring to non-pundits and it was fun experimenting with new methods of engaging audiences outside of our regular broadcast," he said.
"Special thanks to producer Sam Harvey for his tireless work wrangling messy scripts into something listenable and extra thanks to executive producer Hannah Brown for cutting all the boring bits."
Tupou won for her coverage of the Pāpātoetoe tornado, which the judges said "brilliantly illustrated a devastating natural disaster through exclusive raw footage, great talent and camera work, and plenty of human emotion".
"It's a real honour to be recognised, but it was absolutely a team effort. Our camera operators, editors and producers all helped with the Pāpātoetoe tornado coverage," said Tupou.
"I'm so proud of the sensitive way we were able to capture not only the severity of the destruction but what it represented. Locals' lives were hugely affected - some peoples' homes were ripped open and no longer safe, meaning they now had to find a new house to call home for the coming weeks.
"Residents didn't have to talk to us or let us film on their properties and yet most people we spoke to were more than happy to do just that. I want to thank all of those people for sharing their story so Kiwis could see and feel the full effect of this cyclone from wherever they were in the country."
A list of all winners at the 2022 Voyager Media Awards along with accompanying judges' comments can be viewed on the official News Publishers' Association website.
The awards span four categories: Print/Text Journalism, Broadcast Journalism, Photography and All Media.
