Nikkei Asia wins two golds at WAN-IFRA Asia awards

SINGAPORE -- Nikkei Asia has won two prizes at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards, earning recognition for its feature writing and COVID-19 pandemic coverage.

Nikkei Asia, which is part of Tokyo-based media group Nikkei Inc., took two gold medals in the annual honors run by the World Association of News Publishers.

In the feature article category, the gold medal went to a piece titled "Road to nowhere: China's Belt and Road Initiative at tipping point," which highlighted the debt crises and corruption in some of the focal points of the BRI project, including Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

The article, by Adnan Aamir, Marwaan Macan-Markar, Shaun Turton, Cissy Zhou and Grace Li, was one of the three-part series that highlighted the status of the BRI project after nearly a decade since its inception.

The COVID-19 reporting gold medal went to "Asia's scamdemic: How COVID-19 supercharged online crime," which investigated the post-pandemic explosion in online fraud in Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar.

Lead reported by Dominic Faulder with contributions by Thompson Chau, Kyokuto Murayama, Anchalee Romruen and Sun Narin, the article revealed the casino-based underworld operating on the Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar sides of Thailand's borders.

In May, the piece was also given a prize in the category of explanatory feature writing in the English-language section of the Human Rights Press Awards, organized by Human Rights Watch and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

Both of the winning pieces featured visual storytelling elements, including motion graphics, video and interactive maps that were crafted by Nikkei Asia's design and photography teams.

Shin Nakayama, Nikkei Asia's editor-in-chief, said the awards were further recognition of the publication as a high-quality global media brand. "The winning stories are the result of a collaborative effort by reporters and editors across the region, and we aim to continue producing quality journalism through teamwork," he said.