NEW YORK–The South Asian Journalists Association is pleased to announce four outstanding journalists who have won the 2011 Knowledge@Wharton Awards for Business Journalism, sponsored by SAJA, the Wharton School and the Knowledge@Wharton online business journal.
–Tanzina Vega, a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and a reporter for The New York Times, won the NAHJ-Knowledge@Wharton Award.
– Kimberly Chou, a member of the Asian American Journalists Association and a news assistant at the Wall Street Journal, won the AAJA-Knowledge@Wharton Award.
–Priyanka Dayal, a member of SAJA and a business reporter for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette (a New York Times Co. newspaper), is one of the recipients of the SAJA-Knowledge@Wharton Award.
–Aruna Viswanatha, a member of SAJA and a journalist Reuters in New York, is another winner of SAJA-Knowledge@Wharton Award.
The awards provide journalists with a scholarship to attend the prestigious Wharton Seminars for Business Journalists (www.wharton.upenn.edu/journalists) at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in October. Knowledge@Wharton and SAJA launched the award in 1999 and later expanded it to include the four organizations in UNITY: Journalists of Color — AAJA, NABJ, NAHJ and Native American Journalists Association. (This year there were no NAJA applicants.)
“A mortgage crisis, global market turmoil, federal, state and local government budget cuts and tracking federal stimulus money. It’s clear that economic and business coverage is important no matter what beat a journalist covers,” said Sandeep Junnarkar, the SAJA Fellowships and Awards Chair. “The Wharton seminar is an immensely valuable opportunity for journalists to learn about intricacies of business coverage. We’re grateful to the Wharton School for the 12th year of continued support.”
Any member of SAJA, AAJA, NABJ, NAHJ or NAJA who is a reporter, editor or producer (including freelancers) currently living in the United States or Canada and working in business journalism or a field that overlaps, such as healthcare or technology, is eligible to apply for the scholarship. Applicants must be available to attend the Wharton program this year. Individuals with two to seven years of experience as a business reporter or those new to business reporting, but with five to 10 years of experience as a reporter in another field, are encouraged to apply.
“Knowledge@Wharton seeks to disseminate the knowledge behind the news, and the continuing support of the Knowledge@Wharton Awards for SAJA and the UNITY organizations fits in well with this mission,” said Mukul Pandya, executive director and editor in chief of Knowledge@Wharton. “We are delighted to welcome this year’s winners to the Wharton Seminars.”
The judges for this year’s awards were members of the SAJA Board.
About Knowledge@Wharton and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Knowledge@Wharton, http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/ is a free biweekly online resource that captures knowledge generated at Wharton through such channels as research papers, conferences, books, and interviews with faculty on current business topics, and distributes that knowledge online to a global business audience. The Knowledge@Wharton network includes more than 1.3 million subscribers and contains more than 2,000 articles and research papers in its database, with more added every week.
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania— founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school — is recognized globally for intellectual leadership and ongoing innovation across every major discipline of business education. The most comprehensive source of business knowledge in the world, Wharton bridges research and practice through its broad engagement with the global business community. The School has more than 5,000 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral students; more than 9,000 annual participants in executive education programs; and an alumni network of 88,000 graduates.
About the South Asian Journalists Association
The South Asian Journalists Association, http://www.saja.org, 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 800 journalists working for leading newspapers, broadcast networks and new media outlets in various cities in the U.S. and Canada. The organization is best known for its web-based SAJA Stylebook for Covering South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora — “Learn to tell your Hindi from Hindu, and much, much more” — and its annual SAJA Journalism Awards, which recognize outstanding coverage of South Asia and excellence in reporting by South Asian journalists and students in the U.S. and Canada. Each year, more than 700 journalists attend the SAJA National Convention in NYC.
