The winners of the Zurich Journalism Award 2021 have been determined

This year's Zurich Journalism Awards were presented on Monday evening at the Kaufleuten in Zurich. Due to coronavirus, the event was held a quarter of a year later than usual. Eric Gujer, editor-in-chief of the NZZasked in his speech whether everything was really bad in Swiss journalism.

The award for Hanspeter Guggenbühl's journalistic oeuvre unfortunately had to be presented posthumously. Shortly after the jury had chosen the well-known environmental expert, he was fatally injured by a motorcyclist while riding his bike. For four decades, Guggenbühl wrote about current transport, energy and environmental issues in the Swiss-German press and made a name for himself as a dossier-proof expert who persistently kept an eye on the key aspects of these topics. He had a soft spot for the measurable and calculable. Like no other, he was able to "evaluate statistics from a wide variety of sources, place them in context and draw journalistically useful conclusions from them", as the laudatory speech puts it. Over the years, he has expanded his current affairs work with a total of seven books, most of which he published with co-authors. In them, he dealt with the market economy, economic growth, the energy transition and much more.

160 competition entries

Despite the difficult working conditions due to the pandemic, this year's competition was once again characterized by a broad spectrum of strong journalistic contributions. The six-member jury had 160 entries to evaluate. They took ten nominations in May and has now awarded four articles.

Christoph Gertsch and Mikael Krogerus dealt with the Magazine-article "The Magglingen Protocols" about the training of young female athletes at the sports center above Biel. The tough training often pushed the young women to the limits of their mental endurance - and beyond. The harrowing insights into the high-performance sport of artistic gymnastics also triggered an echo in politics. "We will never again be able to watch a competition in without thinking of this report."

Christopher Gilb showed good intuition and tenacity when he opted for the Lucerne Newspaper began to look into the background of an unknown company that wanted to buy a St. Gallen-based group of companies. In six articles on "Scratches on the image of a corporate savior", he exposed the contradiction between the claim and reality of the dubious company. In the end, the takeover fell through - just as Gilb had predicted.

Katharina Bracher and Sacha Batthyany took the growing consumption of child pornography as an opportunity to shed light on the background to this ugly reality (" - "). Using a fictitious digital profile of a girl, they set off into the dark realm of digital sex offenders. It was a march through the abyss. The journalists of the NZZ on Sunday succeeded in creating a dramaturgical masterpiece, the laudation notes.

Samuel Tanner won the Newcomer Award for his work in the NZZ on Sunday article "Faith and power". In it, he accompanies the centrist president Gerhard Pfister on a journey back into Switzerland's political past, when there was still a Catholic-conservative milieu that reliably voted for the CVP. Tanner has written a "wonderful party portrait", and "en passant, the text is also a great portrait of Gerhard Pfister", according to the laudation.

The Zurich Journalism Prize, one of the most prestigious awards for journalism in Switzerland, has been awarded since 1981. Each of the main prizes is endowed with CHF 10,000, while the Newcomer Prize, created in 2018, is endowed with CHF 5,000. Prizes are awarded for complete works as well as outstanding and groundbreaking pieces, regardless of whether they were distributed via a newspaper, magazine or online channel.

For a year now, the Journalism Prize has had a new financial basis. The three Zurich media companies NZZ, Ringier and Tamedia are now the sponsors of the foundation. In addition, companies and institutions support the event with financial contributions.