Golden Pen Media Award

Every year, as part of a project, an award ceremony is organised for the best media publications about Croatia in the past year as well as an accompanying professional study trip. The event is an opportunity to present a new Croatian destination and, at the same time, thank the authors who, through their stories, photos, shows and publications, brought the beauty and specificities of Croatia closer to the international audience.

The awards are presented for five categories:
•    best publication in printed media;
•    best on-line publication;
•    best radio or podcast segment/show;
•    best TV segment/show; and
•    best influencer.

Symbolically, the award is named after Slavoljub Eduard Penkala (1871–1992), a famous Zagreb inventor from the early 20th century, whose inventions marked the world of the written word. Penkala, according to the Croatian Encyclopaedic Dictionary, is a colloquial name for the fountain pen, the ballpoint pen and the mechanical pencil with a replaceable core, all of which were named after Penkala.
Among more than eighty of his inventions, the first mechanical pencil (1906) and the first solid-ink fountain pen (1907) stand out, patents that travelled from Croatia and Zagreb into the world and became universal symbols of journalism, creativity and artistry.