In de Volkskrant today a large piece about juries of literary prizes by Emilia Menkveld. The presentation of the Libris Literature Prize next Monday is the reason (a little further on, Bo van Houwelingen predicts that Sacha Bronwasser will win the prize with Listen). Menkveld’s piece becomes extra interesting towards the end, because it mentions permanent employees de Volkskrant ‘in principle they do not sit on juries that judge the area on which they report as reporters.’
Annieke Kranenberg, member of the editorial team says:
‘There must be no appearance of a conflict of interest, our independence and reliability are paramount in everything. We want to make as few concessions as possible. We have also distanced ourselves from media partnerships, as in the past with the Libris History Prize. We don’t want to commit to writing about an award when we otherwise might not. We want to be able to make a journalistic decision.’
It is also ‘undesirable’ for freelancers to sit on a jury. Menkveld himself regrets the strict protocol:
I myself have been asked to serve on two of these juries in recent years, and have rejected the offer twice, at the urgent request of my editor-in-chief. Too bad, I thought: it had seemed very educational.
Read the whole piece here.
(photo: excerpt from ‘Looking up his pedigree’, FlickrCC BY 2.0)
