The Sidney Prize for Journalism and Thought
In an age when everything gets shorter and briefer – op-eds become tweets, blogs become Twitter posts – the Sidney Prize stands athwart technology, yelling “stop.” Each year, it awards some of the best examples of long-form writing on journalism and thought.
The prestigious prize honors those who have shown loyalty to high ideals. It is named after Philip Sidney Ardern, a professor of English at Auckland University College from 1912 to 1947. The Committee – if one may use such a word – judges the manuscripts and selects a winner. The winner receives a cash award and a certificate. The Committee also awards several honorable mentions.
This year, the prize was awarded to the human rights movement Black Lives Matter for promoting peace with justice, human rights and non-violence. The movement was founded in the US by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi after the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin. The Sydney Peace Foundation will honour the group in November at a special ceremony in Sydney Town Hall.
The Sidney Award for a single magazine essay goes to George Packer’s profile of Angela Merkel in The New Yorker. Packer portrays the German chancellor as a determined, effective, pragmatic leader. He makes clear that she’s no hero on horseback, nor is she a romantic visionary; she’s a “quiet plodder.”
Lastly, the Sidney Prize for a book review goes to Michael Lewis’s acerbic essay in Portfolio on Meredith Whitney and Steve Eisman, two financial analysts who understood early on that the US financial system was headed for disaster. He writes that they “could see reality even while the rest of humanity was lost in a fog.”
In another category, the Sidney Award for a work of journalism goes to a piece by Michael Wolff in The New Yorker about the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton. In the article, Wolff recounts how the bureau’s director, James Comey, was “a man of colossal incompetence and incorrigible arrogance.”
The Sydney Peace Prize is given each year by the Sydney Peace Foundation to promote “peace with justice,” human rights and non-violence. The Foundation aims to honor those who “have devoted themselves to making the world a better place for all its inhabitants.” Past recipients of the prize include Julian Burnside, Prof Noam Chomsky and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The Sydney Peace Foundation is guided by the Geneva Conventions and the Movement’s Fundamental Principles of “Humanity, Impartiality, Neutrality, Independence, Voluntary Service, Unity and Universality.” The winner will receive a cash award and a certificate. Runners-up will receive a certificate.