Former Inverness Courier editor Jim Love, who died earlier this year, is to be remembered at the annual Highland and Islands Media Awards.

The competition’s Reporter of the Year award has been renamed the Jim Love Memorial Award, and will be handed out for the first time at a ceremony next February.

It will then be given annually in memory of the Scottish Provincial Press journalist, who also spent 20 years at the Press and Journal as Highland news editor. He lost a five-month battle with cancer in July.

The awards are open to all journalists living and working in the Highlands and Islands Enterprise area on newspapers, magazines or broadcast, and entries to the 2007 competition are currently being invited.

Other categories include Feature Journalist of the Year, Local Newspaper Reporter of the Year, Sportswriter of the Year and Newspaper of the Year, and the Barron Trophy, which recognises exceptional service to journalism, will also be handed out.

The prizes are £100 for category winners, £300 for the Community Newspaper and Weekly Newspaper of the Year awards and £500 for the Journalist of the Year Award, £300 of which goes to the charity of the winner’s choice.

Last year’s winners included The Shetland Times, which was voted Newspaper of the Year, and Gordon Calder from the John O’Groat Journal who was named Local Reporter of the Year.

Details of how to enter are currently being distributed to newsdesks, and the closing date is December 20.

Winners will receive their prizes at a prestigious Press Ball at the Newton Hotel, Nairn, in February.