Guardian Australia has won three Kennedy awards for outstanding digital innovation, outstanding portrait photography and outstanding columnist at an industry event in Sydney.
The Leaving Gaza interactive, which showcased text messages exchanged between Palestinian friends – one in Gaza, one in the US – in the opening days of the Israel-Gaza war, won the innovation category.
The interactive was produced by Guardian Australia’s Rafqa Touma, Ariel Bogle, Mostafa Rachwani, Nick Evershed, Andy Ball, Christelle Basil and Shelley Hepworth.
Guardian Australia’s picture editor, Carly Earl, won a Kennedy award for her portrait of 19-year-old Riley Swanson while covering a droving team working south of Roma in central Queensland.
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Last month, the portrait won the 2025 Australian Life photography competition, with the judges praising Earl for capturing “a beautiful insight into reality of life in rural Australia” in her portrait of young drovers in central Queensland.
Freelance photographer Elise Darwin was also a finalist in the same category for her portraits for Guardian Australia of residents of Lismore rebuilding their lives after damaging floods.
Guardian Australia’s Ranjana Srivastava, an oncologist and Fullbright scholar, won the outstanding columnist category for her fortnightly pieces. Her entry was titled “On compassion and empathy in medicine”.
Guardian Australia’s podcast on Gina Rinehart was also nominated for the outstanding podcast award. The podcast, presented by Sarah Martin and produced by Shelley Hepworth, Joe Koning and Miles Martignoni, charted the rise of Rinehart and her power and influence.
The Kennedy awards is named after Les Kennedy, a much-loved Daily Telegraph and Sydney Morning Herald crime reporter with impeccable police contacts, who died in August 2011 at the age of 53. His friends and colleagues set up the awards to honour his legacy.
