| In a rejoinder, DAME and its critics, published February 9, 1994, DAME argued that as promising as the “story idea was-an attempt at scrutinising media awards-it failed to treat the subject with the expected depth.” It then submitted:
Your reporter doubts if the mode of choosing winners-through entries and nominations makes it possible to ‘reach out to all journalistic works of excellence in a given year in the country.’ Since DAME does not approach the award contest with the attitude that there is already a list of the best journalists in the categories somewhere, DAME allows everybody who believes he has contributed to the value of excellence in his journalistic work to send such a work.
We wish to stress that the awards are a means to an end and not ends in themselves. Stating that through the awards ’there is non-representation of the best in the profession again presupposes that there is already a group of the best in journalism somewhere. If there were such a group then we would be glad to have them nominated for future DAME awards for the normal screening.
Two, your report states that the mode of participation discriminates against non-Lagos journalists: ‘a critical look at the winners shows a preponderance of Lagos journalists.’ This is far from the truth as there’s nowhere in the DAME announcements published in newspapers and magazines with national spread that restricted entries to Lagos journalists. It is surprising that the reporter preferred to look at the winners to determine geographical representation of the awards rather than the most intelligible indicator--the entries.
If the reporter had visited DAME’s secretariat, he would have been shown entries from such newspapers as The Path (Sokoto), Sunray (Port Harcourt), New Nigerian (Kaduna) and radio stations such as Plateau Radio (Jos). But then, if there’s a “predominance of Lagos journalists,” isn’t Lagos where you have the largest concentration of the Nigerian press? There is need to correct the impression that DAME is another celebration of the cankerworm called Federal character. It is not and will never be. For the second DAME, Joe Olajuwon of Citizen Kaduna won the sports reporting category. The work was entered by Citizen magazine on his behalf-a belief in the reporter’s worth.
Three: Arguing against the efficacy of journalists sending their work, the report calls for a situation where the judges monitor reports for the year to determine which is the best. The report then quotes one university undergraduate referring to Pulitzer thus: “they (Pulitzer) monitor and come up with the acceptable first among equals…” If the reporter had gone into the morgue, he would have found out that Pulitzer, endowed on August 10, 1903, is organised through nominations. The process allows anybody to nominate a journalist working in an American newspaper for any journalism award. The entries-exhibits-of the nominated candidates’ works-are catalogued, then distributed to members of the jury drawn mostly from the Columbia School of Journalism founded by Joseph Pulitzer to examine them.
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