27 June 2003

The awards keep on coming... Jonathan Marks this week said he had spent 23 years working with "the best colleagues in the business" at Radio Netherlands, something that was borne out 24 hours later with the news that Radio Netherlands has been awarded five medals and three finalist certificates at this year's New York Radio Festivals - the annual event honouring the world's best radio programmes. The English department won three medals and three finalist certificates, and the Latin American department was awarded two medals. They were up against more than a thousand entries from about 40 countries. The awards ceremony took place on 26 June 2003. It will be interesting to see if the Dutch media - and some international media-related Web sites - choose to give this achievement as much coverage as they gave to the leaked and now discredited McKinsey findings about Radio Netherlands. Probably not, because when people are doing their jobs well and being recognised for it, it gets boring...there's no story in it. We understand that. We're journalists :-) 9:50:10 PM     comment on this entry []

John Figliozzi at Radio Netherlands We had the pleasure of a visit from a friend and loyal Radio Netherlands listener John Figliozzi today. John will be writing a feature article about Radio Netherlands for Monitoring Times magazine. I've got to know John well over the past few years, and since so much nonsense has been written and said about Radio Netherlands by outsiders in the past few weeks, it will be great to have a decent and properly researched feature about us for a change. John understands international broadcasting and knows what questions to ask. I think he was happy with the answers! 9:32:31 PM     comment on this entry []

Al-Sahhaf's appearance a shock Former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf appeared on TV tonight for the first time since the Americans took control of Baghdad. Rageh Omaar, who was the BBC's Baghdad correspondent until the collapse of the Saddam regime, expressed his shock at al-Sahhaf's physical appearance - he looked 20 years older than he did just a few months ago. Could this really be the same man? Or did he perhaps always have grey hair and dye it to make himself look younger? 9:24:08 PM     comment on this entry []

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