SINGAPORE - The Straits Times' extensive coverage of Singapore's first Olympic gold medal involved journalists from the Sports and Digital desks, photojounalists, graphics journalists, artists and a programmer working from both Singapore and Rio de Janeiro, where the Olympic Games were held.
The cross-media package on Joseph Schooling's Olympic win, published in August last year, clinched the Best Cross Media Story award at the 2016 Singapore Press Holdings' English/Malay/Tamil Media (EMTM) annual awards.
Journalists behind the coverage were Ms May Chen, Mr Jonathan Wong, Mr Kevin Lim, Mr Rohit Brijnath, Ms Lin Xinyi, Mr Chua Siang Yee, Ms Rebecca Pazos, Mr Rodolfo Pazos, Mr Yime Benites, Ms Chew Hui Min, Mr Shea Driscoll, Ms Sally Lam and Ms Winnie Chong.
ST Digital's package on Schooling's win, called How Joseph Schooling Achieved The Impossible, also won an Award of Excellence from the US-based Society for News Design.
The interactive graphic compared his timings at various points in the race with those of other swimming greats like American Michael Phelps and South African Chad le Clos.
"Our team's project tried to, in our way, represent that historic moment for Singapore. It is truly a moment we'll never forget," said Mr Pazos, 35, who heads ST's digital graphics team.
The coverage of Schooling's win showed how the ST newsroom worked as one to put out the latest results, stories, videos and interactive graphics across all platforms, under a tight deadline.
"Joseph Schooling's Olympic gold was the talk of the town. You could hear people cheering in HDB estates, his winning number was even sold out at Singapore Pools outlets. It was epic," said News editor Marc Lim, 40, who was Sports editor at that time. "It needed an equally epic effort on our part - which is why we spared no effort covering his win and Singaporean's reaction to historic moment on all our platforms. From Rio to Marine Parade, we were with him every step of the way."
Digital editor Ong Hwee Hwee, 41, added: "We couldn't use live footage of Schooling's win, but we found creative ways to cover the event. For instance, we had a Facebook live video of his parents watching the race and cheering him on. We also put up an interactive graphic analysing his record-breaking 50.39sec swim and how he was leading his competitors - this is an effort the team is proud of."
The ST team was up against Mohammad Hariz bin Baharudin from The New Paper for his stories on disco: "Disco is still stayin' alive", "Proud to have represented S'pore" and "Disco fever ended as quickly as it started".
