Bournemouth University’s (BU) graduate Natasha Salloum and BU’s news website, ‘The Breaker’ won top prizes at the Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC) awards on 12 December 2024.
The awards are held at Sky News in London each year and celebrate the excellence in journalism training throughout the UK. Winners are selected from over 3,000 students enrolled on its accredited courses.
BU Graduate Natasha Salloum won ‘The Best TV News Feature’ category for her documentary, ‘Four Years Forward’. The film tells the story of four survivors of the 2020 Beirut blast, the trauma they faced and how the community came together to help rebuild their lives. Natasha, a BU Masters graduate in Multimedia Journalism said:
“The Beirut blast was the worst day of my life,I thought I had lost my father when he went missing after the explosion. Miraculously, he survived, though with life-threatening injuries. That experience shaped ‘Four Years Forward’ a story of survivors who came together through a shared sense of community to heal and rebuild.”
The judges at the awards spoke of the high-calibre of work in her film saying: “The winner shows great promise to deliver thought-provoking work, drawing the viewer in with great camerawork from the outset.”
Screenshot from 'Four Years Forward'Natasha, who works as a Digital Content Writer for MBC Studios in Riyadhreplied to the news of winning by saying: “This is so overwhelming because of the personal connection. This means so much to me, to my family, especially my dad, who almost did not make it.”
‘The Breaker’, the multimedia news and features site run by master’s students, won the ‘Best Online News Site’. Judges praised it as a “captivating” site, offering “an enjoyable read”, with “a variety of compelling content that keeps people clicking”.
In 2024, the site covered topics ranging from the Gaza crisis and the war in Ukraine, to dowry-related deaths in Kerala and the transformative role of AI in fashion.
This marks the second win for the ‘Best Online News Site’category for the Breaker team in three years. It had claimed the top prize in 2022 for its reporting on the Ukraine war.
Speaking about the team effort behind the win, Thanh Nguyen, BU MA Multimedia Journalism, who works on the site said: “I think I am speaking for the rest of my class when I say we never expected to do this level of journalism. We published some exciting work, which was very difficult and frustrating when we were doing it. I am so grateful to have had this opportunity to work with teammates who pushed each other to achieve more.”
BU’s Professor Chindu Sreedharan, Programme Leader for MA Multimedia Journalism, said: “What makes the Breaker stand out is that it enables students to tackle complex global stories, as one editorial team. From covering the Gaza crisis to exploring AI’s role in storytelling this year, they had the opportunity to experiment with tools and techniques that reflect the changing face of journalism. It becomes doubly rewarding for us, as their mentors, when all their hard work is also acknowledged externally.”
For information about Journalism courses, please visit the BU website.
