From Assignment to Accolades: Bartira Augelli's Journey to Double SMEDIAs Success

Griffith College congratulates Bartira Augelli, a student on our MA in Journalism & Media Communications programme. Bartira won awards in both categories she was nominated for at the SMEDIAs 2024 – the annual National Student Media Awards. It all started as an Investigative Journalism assignment in February 2023. Now, she's won two SMEDIAs: Journalist of the Year – National Media, and the EPA Award for Journalism Relating to the Environment. 

Bartira says, "When I first wanted to be a journalist, I loved writing, but English isn't my first language. I thought I couldn't do it, but I still tried. In February 2023, I wrote about illegal dumping in Dublin North Inner City. It was a sad situation with lots of trash left on the streets for too long.".  

You can read Bartira's story on TheCircular.org, the website by students taking the Online Journalism module at the Faculty of Journalism & Media Communications. At the suggestion of the MA programme director, Barry, Bartira shared the story with the Dublin Inquirer newspaper. As similar stories had already been published there, Bartira was passionate to keep pursuing the story further.  

After months of hard work and dedication, Bartira’s work was published in November 2023 with the Dublin Inquirer. Now she's a regular reporter for them, covering different stories. We're proud to have helped Bartira pursue her passion for quality journalism here at Griffith College.  

Bartira is continuing to study part-time for her MA in Journalism & Media Communications and will be submitting her MA Dissertation next August. 

This is the second year in a row that one of our students turned an investigative journalism module assignment into an award-winning story. Last year, Aoife O'Mara, a graduate of BA (Hons) in Communications and Media Production won Student of the Year - Journalism Related to Science & Technology.