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, second and third prize winners are provided one free convention pass and gala dinner ticket. 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 saja@deepnews.org - subject line = Award winner response]

SAJA Announces 2005 Journalism Award Winners

Business journalist Steve Shepard among the honorees at 11th Anniversary Convention and Job Fair of South Asian Journalists Association (June 16-19 at Columbia University). Winners named for annual Daniel Pearl award for print reporting as well as new, one-time category for tsunami coverage.
http://www.saja.org/convention2005.html

NEW YORK CITY, May 31, 2005 -- SAJA Group, Inc. and the South Asian Journalists Association, will honor the winners of the 2005 SAJA Journalism Awards contest at its 11th annual dinner on Saturday, June 18, 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 June 16-19 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 by Stephen B. Shepard, former editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek and founding dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York. In addition, Shepard will receive this year's SAJA Journalism Leader Award in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to the field of business and international journalism. He will receive the award from Deepti Hajela, SAJA president and a newswoman for the Associated Press.

"Steve Shepard has set the highest standards in business journalism," said Hajela. "I am honored to present SAJA's highest honor to someone who has helped lead the growing interest in South Asia by the U.S. press." Under Shepard's leadership, BusinessWeek created the first South Asia bureau of an American business magazine and, more recently, drew attention to the region via its dramatic "The Rise of India" cover story in 2003.

Previous winners of this award are Peter Bhatia of The Oregonian; 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; Paul Steiger of The Wall Street Journal; and Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek.

Emceeing the gala will be two prominent South Asian TV personalities, Sumi Das of CNN and Hari Sreenivasan of ABC News Now. This year, a new, one-time category,

SAJA will also pay tribute to the memory of slain reporter Daniel Pearl, who, as Mumbai bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, was a regular participant in SAJA's cyber activities. The fourth Daniel Pearl Award for outstanding print reporting on South Asia by U.S. journalists will be presented that night. This year's winners are Paul Kvinta and Ami Vitale of National Geographic Adventure for their report on the struggle for resources between elephants and the humans who share their habitat in northeastern India.

Also at the dinner, the newest member of the SAJA Hall of Fame will be inducted, veteran journalist Amrit Kakaria, who retired in 2002 after 45 years in the business, most recently as head of U.S. operations of India Today. The Hall of Fame recognizes pioneering South Asian journalists for their contributions to U.S. media as well as veteran U.S. journalists who helped shape coverage of South Asia. Kakaria joins last year's inaugural 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; Rajan Devdas, photojournalist for more than 60 years; and 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.

According to Sandeep Junnarkar, chair of the SAJA awards committee, these awards are crucial "because they recognize the role the reportage plays in fostering a greater understanding of the tumultuous changes shaping countries that are part of the Indian subcontinent and highlight the outstanding quality and breadth of work produced by South Asian journalists in North America."

This year's contest received more than 375 entries representing more than 100 media outlets for work executed in 2004. The entries reflected the higher visibility of South Asians in the United States and the increased attention paid to the subcontinent, including the effects of the 2004 tsunami. 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 2005. The awards will be presented on Saturday, June 18, 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.saja.org/convention2005.html).

The four-day convention will open with a day of workshops on Thursday, June 16, and a reception at the Rubin Museum of Art on W. 17th St. Vanita Gupta, a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defence Fund (who helped acquit 46 wrongly-accused African-Americans in Tulia Texas) will speak, along with New York Times reporter Adam Liptak, who covered this ground-breaking case. Also speaking will be Donald and Shelley Rubin, founders of the museum, which is dedicated solely to Himalayan art. On Friday, after a day of workshops and panels, the evening reception will be headlined by Zana Briski & Ross Kaufman, who won an Oscar this year for their documentary, "Born Into Brothels." The last day of workshops and panels on Saturday concludes with the gala banquet and awards ceremony later that evening.

Sunday, June 19, brings a more relaxed event, a networking brunch featuring three South Asian comics performing at the SAJA Convention for the first time: Rasika Mathur (from Los Angeles); Dan Nainan (from New York); and Azhar Usman (from Chicago).

This year's contest received more than 375 entries representing more than 100 media outlets for work executed in 2004. The entries reflected the higher visibility of South Asians in the United States and the increased attention paid to the subcontinent, including the effects of the 2004 tsunami. 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 2005. The awards will be presented on Saturday, June 18, 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.saja.org/convention2005.html).

"With more than 45 panels and workshops, this will be SAJA's biggest convention ever," said Vikas Bajaj, SAJA vice president and convention chair. "We are also introducing a host of programs and initiatives including a student-staffed blog and salon sessions with
some of SAJA's senior-most members," said Bajaj, who joins the New York Times as a staff writer next month.The convention and dinner are open to the public. All are welcome. Visit http://www.saja.org for details, including ticket information. Those interested in press passes should send relevant information to saja@columbia.edu.

SAJA REPORTING FELLOWSHIPS

SAJA also takes this opportunity to invite all journalists (freelancers or staffers in any medium) to participate in a new program to support reporting projects in South Asia. Up to $10,000 will be given out in 2005 to projects that focus on the aftermath of the Tsunami. In coming years, the program will be open to proposals on other topics, at the discretion of SAJA. Deadline for submitting proposals is Saturday, June 25, 2005. Details and online form at http://www.saja.org/srf.html

CONTACTS: saja@deepnews.org for more information about SAJA or the awards (all winners to contact this address, please). For information about the convention, please contact Vikas Bajaj, convention chair at vikasbajaj@gmail.com.

SAJA JOURNALISM AWARDS 2005

(winners for work executed in calendar year 2004) Each person/team below will receive a certificate at the SAJA Annual Dinner on Saturday, June 18, 2005, at Columbia University. The student winners will receive an additional cash prize.

V. Outstanding story on South Asians in North America- All media

• 1. India Abroad staff, for "The Nurse From India." A cover package that told the story of nurses from the Indian state of Kerala working in the United States - a group that has had an impact on nursing across the country.
• 2. Krishna Kumar, Mantram, for "100 Years... and Counting." The story of Tuly Singh Johl, who came to the U.S. virtually peniless in 1904, and his descendants who live in Yuba City, California.
• 3. Poornima Apte, India New England, for "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" A report on Indian immigrants considering returning to India.

IX. Broadcast

• 1. ABC News Prime Time Live staff. Comprehensive coverage that helped viewers understand the story better than anywhere else.
• 2. Satinder Bindra, CNN. A broad range of stories that looked at the people affected.
• 3. (tie) American Desi staff. Stories that looked at how the South Asian community in the U.S. responded to the disaster.
• 3. (tie) Dr. Mona Khanna & Billy Sexton, KTVT, Dallas. A series of reports from Southeast and South Asia by a medical correspondent and photographer.

X. New Media

• 1. CBC.ca staff. Exceptional in-depth coverage.
  http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/asia_earthquake/
• 2. CNN.com staff. Coverage of the tsunami from all angles
  http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2004/tsunami.disaster/
• 3. MSNBC.com staff. Special reports on various aspects of the disaster.
  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6758619/

CATEGORIES FOR SOUTH ASIAN JOURNALISTS BASED IN THE US OR CANADA

IX. Outstanding story on any subject- Broadcast 

• 1. Rehan Hyder, KDFW, Dallas, for "Undercover Inside Wilmer-Hutchins High." A series of undercover reports about mismanagement and health violations in a Texas school that led eventually to major changes, including the state seizing control of the school district. This Hyder's second SAJA Award.
• 2. Subrata De, NBC Nightly News, for "The Wounded." A series of stories about the most seriously injured American military men and women in the Iraq war.
• 3. (tie) Martin Bashir, ABC News, for "Catch Me If You Can." An exclusive interview with Victor Conte, the man charged with supplying drugs to top athletes in the BALCO sports doping scandal.
• 3. (tie) Lisa Amin, KTXL, Sacramento, for "Hope for Honduras." Reports looking at the lives of poor Hondurans.

CATEGORIES FOR STUDENTS OF SOUTH ASIAN ORIGIN IN US OR CANADA

Notes:
* The awards were judged by journalists drawn from various newsrooms in New York and Connecticut and the faculty of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York and the Indiana University School of Journalism at Bloomington. Our thanks to all the judges.

* ATTN: Winners - we need a response! All first, second and third prize winners are provided one free convention pass and gala dinner ticket (in addition to a certificate). See program of the convention here. If you would like to buy a table for 10 to have your colleagues and friends cheer you on, 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 saja@deepnews.org - subject line = Award winner response. Even if they are not attending, the winners should contact saja@deepnews.org so that we can make sure the certificate is mailed to them in July.

ABOUT SAJA GROUP, INC. & SAJA
SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association, was founded in March 1994 as a networking group for journalists of South Asian origin in New York City. It has grown into a national group of more than 1,000 journalists working for leading publications, broadcast networks and online outlets in various cities in the US and Canada.

SAJA works closely with SAJA Group, Inc., a 501(c)(3) organization, in offering a variety of activities and resources.

Details of SAJA's activities and resources for journalists are available at http://www.saja.org.

Among these are the SAJA Journalism Awards program (http://www.saja.org/awards.html), Web-based SAJA Stylebook for Covering South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora (http://www.saja.org/stylebook) and its tips and resources for journalists covering South Asia or South Asians living in North America (http://www.saja.org/tips.html).

The flagship chapter in New York chapter hosts monthly meetings in Manhattan with distinguished guest speakers, as well as various career-oriented panels. SAJA has busy chapters in Washington DC, Bay Area, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Texas and Boston.

Please direct all questions about the SAJA Awards to Sandeep Junnarkar, awards chair: saja@deepnews.org; http://www.saja.org. Please contact Vikas Bajaj, convention chair and business reporter for The New York Times for information about the convention.