Recently, the "superwritings 2013" prizes were announced. I paid a tip of the hat to the 2012 winners, so this time I’m doing it again. The winning texts are a very clear picture of what passes as great journalism in Romania and are quite compelling in their own right.

I feel stupid to simply list the winners.

I haven’t had anything to do with it, I haven’t even participated in any way, but I am bracing myself for some awesome discoveries, and FFFF, decatorevista and casajurnalistului deserve more links, so here we go (I will translate in English though, but you can click the FFFF link in Sources for the original in Romanian):

Winners of the Superwritings Prizes, 3rd Edition, 2013

Superwriting of the Year

Oana Sandu, Equilibrium

Jury Award

The Journalist’s Club

jury’s note: “for the courage of fulfilling its duty outside the mainstream press”

Avon Special Prize for a work on domestic violence

Elena Stancu, I grew up next to a violent father

ESSAY Category

locul I

Teodora Neagu, Night of the Purple Butterfly

locul II

Oana Lohan, A paper airplane that really flies

locul III

Philip Ó Ceallaigh, The Common Grave

REPORTING Category

locul I

Radu Ciorniciuc, The Second Massacre of Horses

locul II

Oana Sandu, Balance

locul III

Oana Moisil, The Dead People Traffic at Roșia Montană

PORTRAIT Category

locul I

Ștefan Mako, Cristina’s Street

locul II

Ana Maria Ciobanu, Perspectives

locul III

Vlad Odobescu, Marius’ Return

OPINION Category

locul I

not awarded

locul II

Luiza Vasiliu, United We Save

locul III

Victoria Stoiciu, Why has Roșia Montană become everyone’s problem

PHOTOJOURNALISM & MULTIMEDIA Category

locul I

Attila Biro, Living torturers list

locul II

Vlad Ursulean, Fracking România | From Pennsylvania til Bârlad

locul III

Alina Matiș, Florin Negruțiu, The NO Syndrome. How Romanian Army Treats PTSD

As you may notice, the first prize in Opinion has not been given, probably because the race to the bottom in getting clicks has caused an acute dearth of pertinent, readable Opinions. Still, one cannot help noticing how important was Rosia Montana this year..

(The comments on the “participate!” page are quite interesting..)

Which builds more pressure on me to finally write a longer story as to why I started this blog and why I could never participate, let alone win in the above competition, even though I find it far more “noble” and relevant than all the “blog contests” in blogo.ro-oaie.

I’ve dumped all the texts into a document to read offline, on my phone when in the Toronto subway (which has no cell coverage, believe it or not), but I don’t recommend you use it, as that will deprive you of the pleasure of finding more stuff on the original publications.

LE: As we are now an English language blog, here we have a list of selected articles from The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf.

Sources / More info: petreanu, ffff-winners, ffff-nominees