Laura Murphy-Oates wins three awards at Mid-Year Walkleys

SBS and NITV journalist Laura Murphy-Oates won three awards, including young journalist of the year.

Laura Murphy-Oates sits with Thelma Favel, whose niece was murdered, and a First nation elder. Picture: Dateline

The Walkleys crowned a rising star last night with SBS and NITV journalist Laura Murphy-Oates winning three awards, including young journalist of the year.

“Laura’s body of work was outstanding,” said the Walkley Advisory Board, which unanimously named her the winner.

“We couldn’t look away. The fact that she was a winner in two categories also speaks to the high quality of her work, the depth of her reporting, her ability to draw insights from interviewees, and her skill in crafting a narrative that engaged viewers.”

Murphy-Oates, who also has a Logie nomination to her name, won for reports shown on The Feed and Dateline, will and receives a two week work experience program at BuzzFeed, The New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Twitter and Quartz.

She also won the young journalist longform journalism award for her kids of Kalgoorlie feature on The Feed, as well as the young journalist public service journalism award.

The biggest upset of the night was when columnist Jane Caro won the women’s leadership in media award, beating the team from the ABC and Fairfax that broke the Don Burke harassment story.

The young journalist winner in shortform journalism was Cassie Zervos of the Herald Sun, for an investigation into illegal solariums,

Samara Gardner, from WIN News Illawarra and WIN News Canberra, won the young journalist regional affairs award for her coverage of the Tathra fires.

SBS also won the young journalist visual storytelling award for Emily Verdouw’s piece for The Feed titled Dangerous games.

A series of reports about cannabis oil “healers” preying on ill people netted Christiane Barro of Monash University the student journalist of the year award.

The two recipients of the Jacoby-Walkley Scholarship, Benjamin Ansell of the University of Melbourne and Amber Schultz of Monash University, will receive paid work experience at the Nine Network and Australian Film, Television and Radio School.

In other categories, an investigation by Emma Field and Vanessa Marsh of The Weekly Times, The Courier-Mail, Townsville Bulletin, Bundaberg NewsMail and The Rural Weekly into a large number of deaths of pacific workers won the Walkley for best industrial reporting.

Karishma Vyas was award the freelance journliasts of the year award for a series or reportings from Afghanistan and Cambodia for Al Jazeera English.

The Arts Journalism Award was awarded to Gabriella Coslovich for her book Whiteley on Trial, about an alleged art fraud involving paintings by Brett Whiteley.

The Walkley-Pascall Award for Arts Criticism went to Delia Falconer, for her writing in the The Sydney Review of Books.