Lucan student (15) wins top NNI prize

A 15-year-old Dublin student has won the top prize in the National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI) Press Pass competition it was announced yesterday.

Fiachra O’Braonain, a transition year student at Coláiste Cois Life, Lucan impressed newspaper industry judges with writing that “exemplified” good journalism.

The inaugural competition is aimed at encouraging reading and improving literacy and critical thinking among post-primary pupils.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny presented prizes to the 16 category winners and runners-up in the competition which saw free newspapers delivered to classrooms in 225 schools, or half of all transition year students.

Commending the NNI, the Taoiseach said the Press Pass programme would teach students how to “access, analyse and evaluate newspaper content, and even how to create that content themselves”.

Debate

Chairman of the NNI, Irish Farmers Journal editor Matt Dempsey, said the competition enabled students to discover different language styles, to debate current issues and to become more critical of what they read and how they write.

“Newspapers get young people reading and the NNI Press Pass will help us to foster a strong relationship with the next generation of readers while helping them to become more informed citizens of a modern democracy,” he said.

Addressing winning students and their teachers, Press Ombudsman and chairman of the judging panel Professor John Horgan said “the best way to learn how to write well is to read well”.

“No short cut”

“If you read good writing, from your earliest years, you will subconsciously pick up a style and adapt it as your own. There is no short cut, no magic bullet: you have to read in order to be able to write.”

Mr Horgan said Mr O’Braonain’s articles on developers and on the juvenile GAA bore “all the hallmarks” of good journalism – observation, “to sift the wheat of significance from the chaff”, the ability to “listen to the answers as well as to ask the questions,” as well as speed, accuracy, evidence, relevance and versatility.

“I love English,” the teenager said after his win. Hoping to spend the remaining week of his transition year work experience at a newspaper, he said, “I’m very interested in journalism. I love reading and writing and I always read the papers.”

In an expansion of the project, the NNI is now collaborating with Colaiste Chiaráin in Croom, Co Limerick to develop a new journalism/media studies module. If successful, the course will become part of the Junior Cert curriculum from September 2014.