News24 looking for new talent

2007-05-16 11:24

South Africa's No 1 website, News24, is running a columnist competition aimed at discovering new writing talent. The winning entry will receive a six-month column-writing contract with News24 worth R6000.

The competition has been running since mid-March and entries close at the end of April.

The competition will be judged by well-known columnists Jon Qwelane, Marianne Thamm, Chris Roper and News24 editor, Jannie Momberg.

"Our users have been sending us their opinions on daily events for years," said Momberg. "This competition is an effort to give these users a bigger voice.

"The advent of the blogging culture in recent years has shown there is a vast pool of excellent writers untapped by the formal media. Our columnist competition is giving them a chance to showcase their talent," said Momberg.

"We are very impressed by the quality of the submissions, which are improving by the week. The response from our users has taken us by surprise. The competition has been fierce with almost 300 entries received from around 100 individual entrants," said Elan Lohmann, News24 Publisher.

"The time taken to craft the well-thought out and executed columns that we have received is a considerable investment of time and energy on the part of our users. Not the sort of thing one fires off on a whim.

"Every day we see hundreds of responses to our articles in the News24 inbox. Since we launched a user comment section last year the response has also been considerable. Most of this valuable opinion goes unnoticed by the rest of our readers. I want to create tangible evidence and a record of the many loyal readers who have been using News24 for the last eight years."

"In much the same way as a newspaper, News24.com has become a companion and trusted source of information to our readers. Users are loyal to us and our readers think that it matters when they send us feedback - and it does. We are trying to show that better."

Time is running out to submit a column in News24's "Craft your column" competition which closes on April 30 2007. Users will be able to submit columns for publication on News24 after the competition closes.

News24 is available online at www.news24.com, on DStv Channel 59 and on mobile at m.24.com

- News24