National award for Chronicle’s Iram

Iram with her award certificate

OLDHAM Chronicle reporter Iram Ramzan has achieved national recognition for developing a website featuring moderate Muslim writers.

Iram (27) was highly commended in the Press Awards for her project bringing together women writers from different backgrounds to promote secular values and tackle extremist views surrounding Islam, women and current affairs.

She attended the Press Awards ceremony at London’s Marriott Grosvenor Square hotel where she was named runner-up in the Georgina Henry Women in Journalism Award.

Iram started a writers’ blog before becoming a Chronicle trainee reporter in 2013 and has been developing it since. She attended South Chadderton School and Oldham Sixth-Form College before studying at the University of Huddersfield and completing a journalism diploma in Manchester.

Recognising the importance of Iram’s project, the judges said: “Never has there been a greater need for such a forum” and described her as a “new fresh voice from the North-West of England”.

Iram will receive a prize grant to help develop her project.