NEW YORK, Dec. 12, 2007: The South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) and SAJA Group Inc. are proud to announce the winners of the 2007-08 SAJA Reporting Fellowships.
SAJA will award four grants this year for reporting pieces in Sri Lanka and India. The winners were, in alphabetical order, two individual journalists: Daniel Grushkin and Srinivas Kuruganti; and a pair of teams: Judith Matloff and Robert Nickelsberg; and Angilee Shah and Arthur Rhodes. More than 25 proposals were submitted this year.
"The number of high-caliber entries made the judging process extremely difficult," said Sandeep Junnarkar, the chair of the SAJA Reporting Fellowships. "The judges found that the winners' projects stood out for their timeliness and compelling storylines. SAJA is eagerly looking forward to seeing the finished works."
The completed works are expected to be available to news organizations around the world at no cost in April 2008.
ABOUT THE WINNERS:
Daniel Grushkin's magazine and Web project "Chadar Trek," will profile a 100 miles trek on the ice floe to the markets in Leh in Indian Himalayas. The ice has become too thin, and the Chadar may become one of India's first victims of global warming as glaciers on the Himalayan range continue to shrink. The Fellowship will provide up to $4,700 for this project. Grushkin is a freelance writer who writes frequently for National Geographic Adventure magazine.
Srinivas Kuruganti's "Industrial Pollution in India" will be an audio-photo Web essay that will bring to light the impact of industrial pollution on the villagers in these several areas of India. Kuruganti will receive up to $4,775. Kuruganti is a freelance photographer whose has been featured in the New York Times, the Village Voice and in “Refugees and AIDS,” a brochure published in 2002 by the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women & Children.
Judith Matloff and Robert Nickelsberg, a writer and photographer respectively, plan to look at the issue mental health in India. They will receive up to $4860. Matloff was a staff foreign correspondent for 20 years and her last two positions abroad were Bureau Chief, Africa and Moscow, for the Christian Science Monitor. Nickelsberg a leading American photographer who has been affiliated for 25 years with Time magazine.
Angilee Shah and Arthur Rhodes plan to produce a multimedia piece that examines the evolution of the conflict in Sri Lanka through the eyes of those most closely affected by the civil war. This team will receive $5,250. Shah is the former managing editor of AsiaMedia. Rhodes is a documentary director and producer. His credits include "Taraki: Media under threat in Sri Lanka” and “Tiger in the Lion’s Den.”
ABOUT THE JUDGES:
The judges for the first round were: Aseem Chhabra, a SAJA board member and a freelance writer; Kiran Khalid, a SAJA board member and director of the documentary "We Are Not Free;" Linda Prout, associate professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and broadcast journalist; Vivian Salama, a freelance broadcast journalist; and John Smock, a photographer for SIPA and an AP stringer.
The judges for the final round were: Subrata Chakravarty, former Assistant Managing Editor of Forbes magazine; Reginald Chua, an assistant managing editor at the Wall Street Journal; and Lonnie Isabel, associate professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and former deputy managing editor of Newsday.
Sandeep Junnarkar, an associate professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and editorial director of Lives in Focus, administered the judging the process.
ABOUT THE SAJA REPORTING FELLOWSHIPS
The SAJA Reporting Fellowships, which were launched in 2005 to ensure follow-up reportage about the 2004 tsunami and its victims, were initially funded by SAJA members, corporate donors and friends of SAJA. This year, SRF received a major financial boost thanks to the support of the Mahadeva Family Foundation, which will make an annual contribution of $20,000.
"The support of Kumar Mahadeva and Simi Ahuja, who have been part of the SAJA community for more than a decade, is critical to SAJA's core mission of improving the coverage of South Asia through the SAJA Reporting Fellowships and similar programs," said Deepti Hajela, the group's president and an Associated Press newswoman. "This is going to have a major impact on the kind of stories that the Fellows do and how Americans learn about what's going on in South Asia today."
A total of up to $20,000 may be given out annually, divided among projects or a single project at SAJA's discretion. Each fellowship award is typically between $3,000-$7,000. Click here to see the work of previous fellows.
ABOUT 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.
Details of SAJA's activities and resources for journalists are available at
http://www.saja.org.
SAJA Group, Inc. is a non-profit charitable organization (EIN: 55-0844632)
and is registered with the State of New York Charities Bureau
(Registration Number 20-70-28). Please send any funding questions to
saja@columbia.edu
Please direct all questions about the SAJA Reporting Fellowships
to Sandeep Junnarkar: sandeep@livesinfocus.org |
