Press releases

Golden Letter winners honored at Grodno ceremony

GRODNO, 15 May (BelTA) - The awards ceremony for the winners of the Zalataya Litera [Golden Letter] National Contest (22^nd edition) was held in Grodno on 15 may, BelTA has learned.

The awards ceremony was held as part of the 6^th Media Community Forum Media Environment Today: Meanings or ‘White Noise’. The winners and laureates of the Golden Letter competition were announced after the plenary session.

The contest received a record 486 entries. National media submitted 95, regional media 352, and departmental media 39. In total, 75 laureates and winners received awards across 27 categories. 

BelTA’s team has been recognized in multiple categories. The prizewinners included the editorial board of the Belaruskaya Dumka journal (BelTA) for its High-fliers project and Svetlana Vasilevskaya, deputy editor-in-chief and editor of the Political Information and Analytics Department at BelTA's main information editorial office.

The Golden Letter was awarded to the editorial board of the 7 Days newspaper for its Parade of Winners: Stories and Faces project and to Vita Khanatayeva, editor of the Information and Analytical Department of the Main News Desk, and to Oleg Foinitsky, lead photo correspondent of the Photo Department at BelTA’s Visual Information Editorial Office.

“The award is the merit of the entire team of the Belarusian news agency BelTA,” Oleg Foinitsky, BelTA’s photojournalist from Mogilev, said receiving the award. “Thank you to my team. This is a shared award,” Oleg Foinitsky said. “Next year will mark 25 years since I entered the profession. We have built a very strong team, and I am grateful to Dmitry Zhuk, who headed the agency at that time, for believing in me and helping me overcome my self-doubt. He taught me a great deal. I was afraid at first because it is, after all, a big responsibility. It's one thing to work for a district newspaper or a regional paper, and quite another to work for the entire country. I still remember my first photograph that made it onto BelTA’s website."

The annual contest is held to develop print media, news agencies, and online publications, to raise the professional level of journalists, and to stimulate creative activity.