The Australian up for accolades at Quill Awards

The Australian’s groundbreaking journalism has been recognised at the Quill Awards, with some of the masthead’s best journalists nominated.

Hedley Thomas. Picture: Glenn Hunt

The Australian’s commitment to groundbreaking journalism has been acknowledged in the upcoming 28th Quill Awards, with some of the masthead’s best journalists nominated for awards in the most illustrious categories.

Eight-time Walkley Award winner and The Australian’s ­national chief correspondent, Hedley Thomas, is up for the 47th Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year Award for his coverage of flaws in the criminal justice system in Queensland.

The nomination recognises Thomas’s outstanding work in podcasts Shandee’s Story, exposing the failures of Queensland’s state-run DNA laboratory after the murder of Shandee Blackburn, and The Teacher’s Pet, which followed the case of Lynette Dawson, who disappeared in January 1982, and the eventual trial of husband Chris Dawson, found guilty of her murder.

Thomas’s nomination also recognises the one-hour Sky News documentary The Search for Justice, delving deeper into Shandee’s Story.

Cameron Stewart, the masthead’s chief international correspondent and a writer for The Weekend Australian Magazine, is nominated in the feature writing category for his story, “Bad Betty”, about Victorian Supreme Court judge Betty King.

Stewart is a former winner of the Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year award.

The winners will be ­announced on March 24 in ­Melbourne.