SAJA Group, Inc.
in collaboration with SAJA, South Asian Journalists Association
Representing 1,000 journalists across the U.S. and Canada
Established March 1994
Press Release Archive
(Below the introduction, you will find a list of winners. All first-place winners and finalists are provided one free convention pass, which includes the gala dinner. If you would like to buy a table for 10, please let us know. If you are a winner and would like to buy a discounted ticket for just the dinner - in addition to the free one you get - please let us know. E-mail sjnews@gmail.com; subject line = Award winner response)
SAJA Announces 2007 Journalism Award Winners
Keynote speakers include Bill Keller of The New York Times, Amanda Bennett of Bloomberg News, Martin Bashir of ABC News “Nightline,”; Peter Bhatia of The Oregonian inducted into the SAJA Hall of Fame; Sendhil Ramamurthy of NBC’s “Heroes” to speak at the Gala Dinner.
http://www.sajaconvention.org
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| Bill Keller |
NEW YORK CITY, June 22, 2007 -- SAJA Group, Inc. and the South Asian Journalists Association will honor the winners of the 2007 SAJA Journalism Awards contest at its 13th annual dinner on Saturday, July 14, at Columbia University in New York.
These annual awards recognize excellence in reporting about South Asia, as well as outstanding reporting by South Asian journalists and students in the U.S. and Canada. The Awards ceremony is part of the SAJA's international convention, which takes place July 12-15 and is expected to draw 1,000 journalists and guests from the U.S., Canada, Europe and South Asia (South Asians and non-South Asians will participate). The awards will be presented at Columbia University.
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| Martin Bashir |
On Friday, July 13, the SAJA Journalism Leader Award will be presented to Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times. At the dinner on Saturday, July 14, Peter Bhatia, executive editor of The Oregonian in Portland will be inducted into the SAJA Hall of Fame. Both awards will be presented by Deepti Hajela, SAJA president and a newswoman for The Associated Press.
"Honoring those who have contributed so much to journalism is among the convention’s highlights,” Hajela said. “SAJA is thrilled to recognize two stellar journalists.”
Previous winners of the Journalism Leader award are Steve Coll of The Washington Post; Rena Golden of CNN; Karen Elliott House and Peter Kann of Dow Jones; Peter Jennings of ABC News; Jai Singh of CNET News.com; Steve Shepard, former editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek and founding dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York; Paul Steiger of The Wall Street Journal; and Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek.
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| Peter Bhatia |
Also at the dinner, the newest member of the SAJA Hall of Fame will be inducted: Peter Bhatia, who has had a long and distinguished career that has spanned at least three decades. The Hall of Fame recognizes veteran U.S. journalists who helped shape coverage of South Asia, as well as pioneering South Asian journalists for their contributions to U.S. media.
Bhatia joins previous inductees Gobind Behari Lal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for science writing in 1937; Brij Lal, veteran broadcast journalist who joined ABC News in 1952 (and Gobind's nephew); Rajan Devdas, photojournalist for more than 60 years; Amrit Kakaria, who spent more than 45 years as a journalist in US and India; James W. Michaels, former editor of Forbes who first covered India during its struggle for independence and revisited the region in reports over five decades; and A.M. Rosenthal, the former New York Times editor who covered South Asia as a young correspondent and continued to write about the region as a columnist.
"I am deeply flattered that SAJA would think me worthy of such an award,” Bhatia said. “I feel very fortunate to have spent the 32 years working in newspaper newsrooms and look forward to the future. I owe any success I have achieved to the amazingly talented people I work with and have worked with, and I am most grateful to have had the opportunity to help people with their careers along the way. This honor motivates me to try to do more.”
SAJA will also pay tribute to the memory of slain reporter Daniel Pearl, who, as South Asia bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, was a regular participant in SAJA's cyber activities. The sixth Daniel Pearl Award for outstanding print reporting on South Asia by U.S. and Canadian journalists will be presented that night. This year's winner is Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times.
According to Sandeep Junnarkar, chair of the SAJA awards committee, these awards "honor the insightful coverage of South Asia and showcase the excellence of South Asian journalists in North America."
SAJA also announces the winners of its 2007 journalism scholarships, totaling $8,500 this year:
* Anuradha Herath, who is receiving her master's in communication at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, is the first winner of the CNN-SAJA Scholarship for Broadcast Journalism ($2,000).
* Sonia Narang, who is starting her second year at UC-Berkeley's Journalism Graduate School of Journalism, receives a graduate student scholarship ($2,000).
* Bilal Qureshi, from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, receives a graduate student scholarship ($2,000).
* Anup Kaphle, a graduate of Tusculum College who will attend Columbia Journalism School in the fall, receives the undergraduate student scholarship ($1,500).
* Parija Sharedalal, a graduate of Long Island City High School who will attend Stony Brook University this fall, receives the high school scholarship ($1,000).
This year's awards contest reflected the higher visibility of South Asians in the United States and the increased attention paid to the subcontinent, including the business and political aspects of U.S.-South Asia affairs. Below is a list of winners of this year's awards. Web versions of articles and photographs will be available online at the SAJA site in August 2007. The awards will be presented on Saturday, July 14, at 6:30 p.m. at a gala awards ceremony at the Roone Arledge Auditorium at Columbia's Lerner Hall (115th St & Broadway) as part of the four-day SAJA Convention (http://www.sajaconvention.org).
Emceeing the gala will be two prominent South Asian broadcast journalists, Hari Sreenivasan, a national correspondent with CBS News, and Aditi Roy, an anchor with NBC 10 News in Philadelphia.
Attendees of the dinner will have the chance to hear from a special guest: Sendhil Ramamurthy, who plays Dr. Mohinder Suresh on NBC's hit show "Heroes." Ramamurthy, who got his start in acting at Tufts University and then studied in London, has performed in theater in New York and England. He's also worked in film and in television, with guest appearances on "Numbers" and "Grey's Anatomy."
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| Amanda Bennett |
The four-day convention will open with a day of workshops on Thursday, July 12, and a reception at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, where journalism deans Steve Shepard of CUNY and Nicholas Lemann of Columbia University will speak. Friday opens with a conversation with Keller. After a day of workshops and panels, the evening reception at Bloomberg News will be headlined by Amanda Bennett, executive editor for enterprise at the news service. The last day of workshops and panels on Saturday, July 14 concludes with the gala banquet and awards ceremony later that evening. Sunday, July 15, brings a more relaxed event, a networking brunch with live entertainment.
"As our profession continues to grapple with financial challenges and new technologies, this and other journalism conventions are more important than ever," said Vikas Bajaj, SAJA's vice president and a business reporter at The New York Times. “With budgets under pressure, many newsrooms have scaled back on training at a time when reporters and editors are having to shoulder greater responsibilities and learn more skills. That is why this year’s SAJA convention focuses more on hands-on workshops.”
The convention and dinner are open to the public. All are welcome. Visit http://www.sajaconvention.org for details, including ticket information. All questions about the convention should be addressed to SAJA convention team at sajaconv@gmail.com. Those interested in press passes should send relevant information to saja@columbia.edu.
There are still some high-profile sponsorship opportunities available. Join companies like CNN, Bloomberg, The New York Times, NBC, UnitedHealthcare, Air India, TamarindArt Gallery and others as SAJA sponsors. See details at http://www.saja.org/about/sponsorship.html
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