Two prizes awarded to the local newspaper Dølen for the investigative project ‘Rondablikksoga’
Fritt Ord congratulates Dølen on winning two prizes at Polaris Media’s annual awards ceremony, which was conducted in digital format on Wednesday, 25 November 2020.
The one prize was for the published articles and the other for Editor Tone Sidsel Sanden’s reflection on the work along the way.
The text documentary ‘Rondablikksoga’ is about a mountain resort hotel that was transformed into a reception centre for asylum seekers over the course of a weekend during the refugee crisis in 2015. At the time, the hotel was filled with guests, and the employees received neither warning nor training. At the same time, the resort owner received tens of millions of NOK from the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration, while local businesses sustained losses. The articles address how the future unfolded for the hotel in terms of asylum-seekers and the employees.
As Editor Sanden wrote when the story was published in November 2019: ‘Rondablikksoga’ “is most of all about people. [It] is about how we receive those seeking asylum, how we are there when someone needs us.”
The whole story of Rondablikk can be read on Dølen’s website (in Norwegian only): Rondablikksoga (29 November 2019). There is also a summary (in Norwegian only) on NRK.no: When the hotel became an emergency reception centre overnight (30 November 2019).
