The Central News Media Prize, now in its third year, is nominated and judged by UTS journalism students, and looks to honour the best piece of Australian journalism in the calendar year.

Emphasis is placed on innovation, engagement, inspiration and best practice, with nominees selected from all mediums and covering mainstream, independent and citizen journalists.

Students submit nominations via an online form, before a panel of judges made up of the media prize editors and students selected for having won awards themselves during the year, decide a winner.

An award ceremony is held at the Abercrombie Hotel at a date to be announced in March, where the winner will be given the Media Prize trophy — a 3D printed replica of the UTS tower with a bean plant growing in it.

Student awards for best practice in the Central News newsroom and Faculty Awards for academic excellence, are also given out on the night.

For any enquiries email the current Media Prize 2025 editors Ebony Brown on Ebony.E.Brown@student.uts.edu.au or Ainslie McNally on Ainslie.F.McNally@student.uts.edu.au.

We are now taking entries for the Media Prize 2026.

Past winners

Media Prize 2025

An investigation into the use of ‘restrictive practices’ towards students by teachers in schools was named the winner of the 2025 Media Prize on March 12, 2025.

Zacharias Szumer‘s two-parter for SBS uncovered cases of mistreatment of a number of students across the country who are neurodivergent or disabled. Other nominees included a street interviewer using TikTok and YouTube to tell stories of homelessness in Sydney, a scientist tweet-threading information about mysterious ‘tar balls’ washing up on Sydney beaches and a front page story in The Australian about the threat to Indigenous archeological sites on the Nullarbor. To read about all the results, including student awards, CLICK HERE.

Szumer, from Melbourne, accepted the award at an evening at the Abercrombie Hotel, which was also attended by three of the other nominees or their reps. Numerous industry guests also attended, including from Seven, SBS, ABC, Crikey, Mumbrella, 2SER and Mail Online.

This year’s judges were Ike Morris (JERAA Award winner), Yasmine Alwakal (Kennedy Award winner), Caitlin Maloney (NSW Premier’s Multicultural Communications award winner) and Media Prize editors Ebony Brown and Ainslee McNally.

 

Media Prize 2024

The winner of the inaugural Media Prize in 2024 was an immersive piece of multimedia journalism that took readers/viewers on ‘a journey’ through a major urban building fire.

‘Razed’ by the ABC NSW and Innovations teams used video, photography and animated graphics of the old hat factory building in Surry Hills that was gutted by fire in May last year, to comprehensively tell the story of how the fire happened, weaving in historical facts and eyewitness accounts in a longform, parallax scrolling feature.

The Prize was judged by journalism students at UTS, who sorted through dozens of stories, videos and podcasts nominated over the previous year.

ABC journalists Jack Fisher and Katia Shatoba accepted the prize at an awards night on March 20. Their colleagues Harriet Tatham, Catherine Hanrahan and Julia Feder were all honoured by an audience of about 80 UTS journalism students for their work on the project.

To read the full story about the award, the other nominees and the awards night at the Abercrombie Hotel CLICK HERE.

The 2024 judges were Pamela Rontziokis, winner of the Walkley’s Student Journalist of the Year 2024 and the Crikey Award for Investigative Journalism, JERAA Ossie Awards 2023; Suhayla Sharif, winner of the Alan Knight Award for Student Journalist of the Year at the 2023 NSW Premier’s Multicultural Communications Awards; Jonathan Weitz-Freeman, winner of the Democracy’s Watchdogs Award 2023 for Investigative Journalism; Rex Siu, Media Prize Editor; Ayesha Baig, Media Prize Editor.

Main image Central News.