Nitin Sethi and Shiv Sahay Singh win ACJ's journalism awards

Singh won the inaugural social impact journalism award for his story titled "Death by digital exclusion: On faculty public distribution system in Jharkhand" published in The Hindu, the Asian College of Journalism said in a statement.

Nitin Sethi and Shiv Sahay Singh have been declared winners of the Asian College of Journalism’s award for investigative journalism and the K P Narayana Kumar Memorial Award for social impact journalism respectively. The awards ceremony was conducted online due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Sethi won in the investigative journalism category for his six-part series titled "Paisa Politics" published by The Huffington Post India. Singh won the inaugural social impact journalism award for his story titled "Death by digital exclusion: On faculty public distribution system in Jharkhand" published in The Hindu, the Asian College of Journalism said in a statement. The final jury, comprising journalists Senthil Changalvarayan, Vidya Subrahmaniam and Jose Martin Tharakan, chose the winners from 10 shortlisted entries in each category, the statement said.

Both awards comprise trophies and citations. The Investigative Journalism Award winner receives Rs 200,000 in prize money and the Social Impact Award winner gets Rs 100,000, the statement said. The awards were presented by Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist of the World Health Organisation, at the inauguration of the Class of 2021.

Jeff Joseph Paul Kadicheeni’s work "Kerala’s Contentious Quarries" published in The Lede and Rohini Mohan’s "Worse than a death sentence: Inside Assam’s sham trials that could strip millions of citizenship" in Scroll.in have been awarded special mentions by the jury in the Investigative Journalism Category, the statement said. The ACJ Journalism Awards Committee received 105 entries in the investigative journalism category and 147 entries in the social impact journalism category, it said.

The entries came in seven languages from over 60 news organisations and publications as well as independent/freelance journalists from across India for the 2019 edition of the awards, the statement added. Two preliminary juries comprising 18 faculty members of the ACJ selected entries for the perusal of the final jury.