Mark Lagerkvist

Cheers!  The IRE Awards competition showcases the skill, dedication and excellence of its winners and entrants.  It demonstrates IRE’s enormous contributions to the betterment of journalism, public service and society as a whole.

For the past year I’ve served on the Contest Committee, spearheading proposals that will update, upgrade and streamline the IRE Awards competition.  We’ve made a lot of progress, but there is more to be done.

To continue this work, I seek a second one-year term to help IRE complete this task.

The current contest categories still sound so institutional and bureaucratic – Print/Online I thru IV?  Video I thru IV?  Large audio and small audio?  It does little to create interest to some of the best reporting on the planet, nor does it add much sparkle to the winner’s resume.

The IRE Awards deserve much more attention than they currently receive. Why not increase exposure by staggering the releases, allowing winners of each major category to get the notice they deserve?  For example: Look at how the Noble Prizes sequence their celebrations.  Or how Major League Baseball spaces out its MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, Manager of the Year announcements.

In the past, IRE conferences featured a dedicated track to feature contest winners.  Now we don’t.  Maybe it’s time to take a fresh look at what we can do to give our members more opportunity to see this great work. To be fair, each winning entry deserves more exposure than a short blurb between courses at a luncheon.

My qualifications?  During a distinguished career as an investigative journalist, I’ve worked for newspapers, networks, local television, online news sites, magazines and radio. A few highlights:

• Former IRE Board member with a long history of service. First joined IRE in 1976 as part of the historic inaugural conference in Indianapolis. In New Orleans, I will be attending my 44^th annual conference.
• Winner of an IRE Award – plus 70 other journalism honors, including top prizes from National Press Club, Scripps-Howard and many others.
• Served as an IRE contest screener for three years before my current term as a judge.
• Founder, organizer and promoter of the legendary Blues Bash party, which raised $38,000 for IRE during its 14-year run (1999-2012).

Visit https://lagerkvist.online/ for more. Thank you for your consideration.