PCIJ reaps 2008 DAJA honors

THE PCIJ again emerged victorious at the 2008 Developing Asia Journalism Awards (DAJA) held recently in Tokyo, Japan, garnering the top prize in one of four categories and clinching runner-up honors in another.

Alecks P. Pabico, the Center’s multimedia director, won the top prize in the Governance category for his report “People Power Thrives in Naga City” published on April 29, 2007. The report, which was part of the PCIJ’s i Report series on local “faces of change” in line with its coverage of the 2007 elections, tackled the strong tradition of people participation in Naga that Jesse Robredo harnessed in 16 years in office as city mayor to institute reforms, but whose long-term sustainability, many think, could be challenged in a post-Robredo era.

PCIJ fellow Roel Landingin, on the other hand, was runner-up in the Infrastructure category for his story “Bids Sans Caps, Tied Loans Favor Foreign Contractors” published on February 12, 2008. Landingin’s report, the second in a three-part series on official development assistance to the Philippines, delved into how the absence of caps on bids, tied loans and conditionalities of lenders have favored foreign contractors and triggered cost overruns and project delays.

Organized and sponsored by the Asian Development Bank Institute since 2004, DAJA awards excellence in journalistic reporting that cover development trends and issues in Asia. This year’s awards focused on four strategic areas of development as categories: governance, infrastructure, the environment, and regional integration.

The other winners were:

Governance

• Khawaza Main Uddin of Bangladesh, “Bangladesh Agriculture Still Trapped in Ad-Hoc Policymaking” — runner-up

Infrastructure

• Sahana Singh of India, “Can Gwalior Show the Way to Asian Cities?” — winner

Environment

• Zaky Yamani of Indonesia, “Water Hunters: The Causes and Impact of Privatization in Bandung, Indonesia” — winner
• Rina Saeed Khan of Pakistan, “Saving Sonmiani” — runner-up

Regional Integration

• Deepa Anappara of India, “Studies in Isolation” — winner
• Yan Zhu of China, “Bird Flu: A Problem for Developing Nations Only?” — runner-up

Special awards were also given to Mallika Aryal of Nepal and Dhoke Meghana of India as Young Development Journalist and Development Journalist of 2008, respectively.

Only the best 25 entries were chosen from close to 250 published and unpublished works between January 1, 2007 and August 22, 2008 submitted by individual journalists from ADB developing member countries.

Among the finalists were Malou Mangahas, PCIJ executive director, for “When Politics Pollute Civil Service: New CSC Chief Faces Pack of Ineligible Bureaucrats” which was co-written with Isa Lorenzo (governance); and writing fellow Marlon Alexander Luistro for “Illegal Fish Cage Operations Poison Taal Lake” (environment).

The panel of judges was composed of Anthony Rowley, Tokyo correspondent of The Business Times and field editor for Oxford Analytica; Yoshio Murakami, international affairs adviser to The Asahi Shimbun; Sri Lankan journalist Suvendrini Kakuchi, Panos News Service country representative; and Monzurul Huq, a Bangladeshi journalist who is the Tokyo correspondent of the Daily Star and Prothom Alo, two leading national dailies in Bangladesh.

Departing from its usual format, the 2008 DAJA brought the finalists to Tokyo on November 11 to first attend a three-day workshop on the current thinking on the four strategic areas of development, including macroeconomic stability, private sector development, the role of financial institutions, and impacts of globalization and regionalism. The awards ceremony was held last Friday, November 14, at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.