In the second of his 'Chair's view' posts, Headlinemoney Awards Chair of Judges, David Worsfold, looks at the 2025 category refresh and the reasons behind the changes:

When you have an awards as successful as the Headlinemoney Awards there is always a temptation to say ‘same again’ and just roll out the same categories and criteria as before. With any awards scheme this is a recipe for eventual decline as they start to look tired and less relevant to the market they serve.

With media awards this would be a very fast route to irrelevance.

Of course, there are always some categories that stand the test of time and there are many that remain the backbone of the Headlinemoney Awards. Others have been revised or created to ensure the awards remain inclusive, relevant, and reflective of the changing media landscape and the issues we must cover today.

Of course, every year there are suggestions from journalists about the categories. Some of these come close to asking for a category to be created or criteria changed so they stand a better chance of winning it! Nice try, but the answer is no.

Other suggestions are far more constructive and they have prompted us to think hard.

The need to recognise the contribution of those outside the mainstream media has been a challenge. For a while having a category for bloggers seemed to meet that need but as the lines between non-traditional content creators and established journalists became blurred this no longer seemed to work. The language of ‘blogger’ also seems a little dated.

Our response has been to create an entirely new category of Independent Financial Influencer of the Year. We look forward to many stimulating entries.

It is important for the future of the awards that they are seen to move with the times. They were founded in an era when print was still dominant but that world has gone. This is why we have added a Broadcast of the Year category to recognise the central place multi-media has in our world today. Many previously print-first brands now make excellent videos and podcasts. This is a category for them, where their content can be judged alongside that of the pure-play broadcast media.

Last year, the Campaign of the Year entries were overwhelmingly about financial inclusion and/or diversity. This is what people are writing and broadcasting about so we have made that a more focussed category - Diversity and Financial Inclusion Story of the Year.

Ensuring that the awards are not just for national journalists and brands or those based in London has always been important but the description of Local & Regional needed to catch up with the much stronger identity of the separate nations of the UK as well as the consolidation of the once very diverse local media into more regional brands. Hence the update to Nations and Regions Journalist of the Year. This does not mean we do not want to see entries from those who still see themselves as local journalists; far from it.

Finally, there is the combination of the consumer and B2B awards for general insurance journalist into a single category, which follows a similar move with the protection journalist category last year.

There are two reasons for this. One is about numbers. There are fewer people who see themselves as specialists in these areas than in the past. Of those that do, several write across both consumer and B2B and we want to make sure they have the best opportunity to shine.

That is the mission that underpins the whole awards. Giving excellence the chance to shine.

David Worsfold, Headlinemoney Chair of Judges