•As assessors beg
Chairman, Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Africa foremost media excellence scheme, organisers of the Nigerian Media Merit Award (NMMA), Mr Vincent Maduka, at a press conference to announce the commencement of the assessing of entries for the 24th edition of the NMMA, said 10 categories were dropped this year from the regular 53 categories due to lack of sponsorship of the dropped categories.
He named some of the categories as the Beatrice Bassey Best Female Newspaper of the year, NPA Maritime Reporter of the year, Intercontinental Capital Market Reporter of the year, Aviation Reporter of the year and six other categories.
He added that the board of assessors, made up of 24 highly educated personnel from Television, Radio, academia and other professions, received 648 entries this year, as against the 886 entries submitted last year, which indicated a drop in entries this year.
He said there was 523 entries from the print, 67 entries from the Radio Stations and 47 from Television stations
The chairman, panel of assessors, Professor Ralph Akinfeleye, a lecturer at the University of Lagos, Akoka, said from the 45 categories for this year, 33 awards were for the print category, six awards for the Radio category and six awards for the Television category.
He added that the criteria to be used to select the winner from each category was that the winners must score up to 70 per cent and if no entrant score up to 70 per cent, there would be no winner in that category, as this would be done to meet international standard.
Mr Maduka officially handed the entries to the chairman, panel of assessors, to begin the process of selecting the winners for each category. No date and venue have been fixed for this year’s award.
The organisers, therefore, called on corporate bodies to sponsor the event and award categories.
in work to select winners