DAME at 30: Salute to tenacity

By Femi Babatunde

After hosting 29 successive editions of its annual presentation, the Diamond Awards for Media Excellence (DAME) qualifies to be described as Africa’s longest-running and most consistent media awards programme. 560 awards later in diverse fields of media work, DAME is a long-distance runner that has discharged its mandate creditably. 

That mandate is to give the media a platform to honour and encourage her to put the best foot forward always as an important partner in nation-building.  

From the perception of journalists as an angry lot ready to muddy reputations as the phenomenon of junk journalism threatened in the late 80s and early 90s, the example of DAME shows that the media can be encouraged to tread the path of professionalism and honour. 

Year after year, DAME has come to occupy an important chapter in the media calendar as a platform where professionalism is enthroned above politics and honour is not for sale. A controlled number averaging 19 awards is given annually to underscore DAME’s commitment to quality and not quantity. 

DAME winners have witnessed an upsurge in their professional fortunes since being bestowed with honour. From the tribesmen of serial winners of the Informed commentary prize such as Azu Ishiekwene, Reuben Abati, and Sam Omatseye to winners in multiple beats such as Ronke Olawale, Olatunji Ololade, Joseph Jibueze, and Eric Dumo, DAME continues to offer professional validation for those willing to subject themselves to its magisterial scrutiny.

The Nigerian media and indeed the nation remain the winners. We must continue to thank DAME for the faith imbued in the Nigeria project through its consistently transparent services for 30 years. 

This Sunday, 19th December, a new band of outstanding media professionals will join this privileged rank at the 30th edition scheduled to hold at the MUSON Centre. It should provide a deserved platform to celebrate the journey of the last three decades in rewarding enterprise and excellence in the Nigerian media.  

Since it debuted in 1992, DAME, dubbed in some quarters as Nigeria’s version of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize, has matured as a resilient, temperate, and assured brand. The integrity of the award has equally been preserved without slipping into the compromise that often plagues such laudable enterprise in this part of the world. This, no doubt, has contributed to its reckoning by media professionals as a highly coveted prize.

DAME is run by a board of trustees that includes media professionals and veterans and funded by individuals and institutions that believe in a strong, free and responsible media. This fact, one would imagine, has helped significantly in defining the professional identity of the awards. 

Aside from the annual awards ceremony, DAME equally lends its hands to the retooling of journalists. Its notable efforts include the “widening the pools of excellence” training targeted at intimating journalists with new challenges in reporting and deepening their news judgment; election reporting workshops, conflict-sensitivity communication workshops for journalists in conflict-prone areas, among many other laudable interventions.   

In Diamonds Are Forever, a 10th DAME commemorative publication, Lanre Idowu, Editor-in-chief of Media Review who doubles as a Supervising Trustee of the Award, offered a glimpse of the conviction behind the DAME project: “We remain convinced that there is something in human nature that yearns for recognition and appreciates being singled out of the crowd for positive contribution to society… The professionals in media in general and journalists, in particular, needed such recognition to improve public perception of their role and their place. For long, perceived as ethically unscrupulous, we felt a humanistic programme such as DAME would go a long way in reassuring media professionals that their vocations were as important as others and that they have a critical role to play in nation-building”.  

DAME has come a long way, waxing stronger in the face of multivariate issues, and growing along with the country’s historical development. The assaulting realities facing the industry, notwithstanding, DAME has courageously surged with renewed hope of reinventing a threatened industry through an ethically distinctive reward scheme.  

30 years is indeed a milestone, deserving of drum rolls and a grand celebration of baby steps that have matured into giant strides. But the state of the media industry today throws a spanner in the works, forcing a deep introspection on the need for stocktaking by industry heavyweights.  

DAME remains as committed as ever, but who’s with her on this?  

Femi Babatunde, a media professional, wrote from Osogbo, Osun State