The launch of the Wintec Press Club

I take back almost everything I have ever said about Steve Braunias. He has named me as the latest “winner of New Zealand media’s most coveted award”. This, of course, is the weekly Alcohol Sponsorship Press Award, sponsored by the makers of Grower’s Mark wines: 

The award recognises excellence and strangeness in New Zealand media, including social media, and is open to editors, reporters, subs, weblog writers, photographers, illustrators, critics and even tender editors of the New Zealand Herald.

The judging panel comprises a seasoned media professional in each of the four main centres, as well as Raglan and Motueka.

The full judges’ report is here at Pead PR’s blog: other finalists included Toby Manhire, Patrick Gower, Chad Taylor, Matt Nippert and New Idea.

The winning entry was Wednesday’s post about lunch with Winston Peters. Steve writes:

Stratford’s write-up was elegant, wonderfully observant, as arch as the McDonald’s sign, and mostly accurate, although he failed to note that the lunch series is no longer called Media Bites, and has been renamed the Wintec Press Club.

It’s a mark of Stratford’s influence that his blog drew the attention of David Farrar at Kiwiblog and Cathy Odgers at Cactus Kate. He’s quite viral.

 “Quite viral.” I’ll take that as a compliment. 

In his judges’ report Steve upbraids me for neglecting to mention that the lunch series has changed its name from Media Bites to the Wintec Press Club. My excuse is that it happened with such bewildering speed – we had been invited to Media Bites but at the start of proceedings Steve put a motion proposing the name change, declared it carried and said it would take immediate effect: “That’s the way we rock, Peters.”