Nick McKenzie wins Kennedy Prize Journalist of the Year

The Age’s investigate journalist Nick McKenzie has won the 2020 Kennedy Prize for Journalist of the Year.

McKenzie’s portfolio of three major unrelated stories – ‘‘The Faceless Man’’, ‘‘Crown Unmasked’’ and ‘‘One Last Mission’’ – set him apart from a strong field in one of the biggest news years in history.

Nick McKenzieCredit: Nine

In ‘‘The Faceless Man’’, one year in the making and produced for The Age and 60 Minutes with Joel Tozer and Sumeyya Ilanbey, McKenzie presented evidence of shocking misconduct in the Victorian branch of the Labor Party as the dark underbelly of Australian political power was exposed.

The end product was an unprecedented look at how power is won and controlled within the Labor Party.

McKenzie and the 60 Minutes team cultivated sources and obtained a raft of leaked internal documents which led, ultimately, to taped evidence that provided undeniable evidence of the rot in Labor politics.

‘‘Crown Unmasked’’, which McKenzie produced for 60 Minutes, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age with Grace Tobin and Nick Toscano, won two major awards: Outstanding TV Current Affairs and Outstanding Finance Reporting. It exposed a corporate scandal unlike anything Australia had seen.

"One Last Mission", which was a finalist in the Jim Oram Outstanding Feature Writing Award, was the product of two epic journeys involving former SAS medic, Dusty Miller, who struggled for almost a decade to try and right a war crime in Afghanistan in 2012 and then, finally, the medic’s mission of redemption back in Afghanistan while battling the sad deterioration of his mental health.

The story is an insight into a painful, sensitive and vitally important issue confronting Australia’s military.

Nine collected a total of 16 individual award categories across its news and current affairs programs and its metropolitan newspaper mastheads, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Simon Bouda took out the Les Kennedy Award for Outstanding Crime Reporting with his A Current Affair entry, "Operation Pinnacle"; The Sydney Morning Herald’s Nick Moir won the coveted Outstanding News Photo Award while The Australian Financial Review’s James Brickwood collected the Outstanding Portrait Award.

Dallas Kilponen’s freelance photo which appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald was voted the Power of the Lens Peoples’ Choice winner.

Nine’s swag also included 9 News’ Neil Breen taking out Outstanding Sport Reporting; A Current Affair’s Lauren Golman collecting the $5000 Young Journalist of the Year Award; A Current Affair winning the Mike Willesee Award for Nightly TV Current Affairs; The Sydney Morning Herald taking the gong for Outstanding Court Reporting, Outstanding Reporting on the Environment and Outstanding Investigative Reporting, 9 news.com.au winning Outstanding Online News Breaking while 9 News’ Chris O’Keefe won the prestigious Outstanding Political Reporting Award.

Kennedy Foundation chairman Mr Rocco Fazzari said more than 100 nominees from a near record field of entries were judged in all 35 competitive categories to finally decide winners in the 2020 NRMA Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism.

“In a bumper news year the standard of submissions was exceptional in every category. As has been the case in the past, it took judges long hours to finally sort out the winners from absolutely talented fields,” he said.