ST wins 2 awards for digital news packages

The awards were given out for The Straits Times package on the global migrant crisis called Fleeing To Survive (left), and swimmer Joseph Schooling's stunning win at the Olympics, called How Joseph Schooling Achieved The Impossible.
The awards were given out for The Straits Times package on the global migrant crisis called Fleeing To Survive (above), and swimmer Joseph Schooling's stunning win at the Olympics, called How Joseph Schooling Achieved The Impossible. PHOTO: ST GRAPHICS
The awards were given out for The Straits Times package on the global migrant crisis called Fleeing To Survive (left), and swimmer Joseph Schooling's stunning win at the Olympics, called How Joseph Schooling Achieved The Impossible.
The awards were given out for The Straits Times package on the global migrant crisis called Fleeing To Survive, and swimmer Joseph Schooling's stunning win at the Olympics (above), called How Joseph Schooling Achieved The Impossible. PHOTO: ST GRAPHICS

The Straits Times has won two Awards of Excellence from the Society for News Design (SND) for its digital news packages on swimmer Joseph Schooling's Olympics win and the global migrant crisis.

ST Digital's package on Schooling's stunning win, called How Joseph Schooling Achieved The Impossible, tracked the Olympian's performance with interactive graphics. It was published in August last year, and 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.

For the migrant package Fleeing To Survive, the ST Digital team worked with correspondents from the paper's Foreign Desk to tell the compelling stories of migrants in South-east Asia and Europe, with videos, photos and maps. It was published in February last year.

The annual competition also gave out awards to international news outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian.

The Award of Excellence, which honours daring and innovative approaches, was given to 271 entries.

The United States-based SND, which encourages high standards of journalism through design, announced the results for the 2016 edition of its Best of Digital Design Competition on its website on Monday.

Almost 60 publications bagged awards, including five gold medals and 27 silver medals. The winners were picked from about 1,000 entries by 14 judges from the US and around the world.

Last year, The Straits Times also picked up three excellence awards in the Best Of News Design international competition, a separate SND contest for print design.

It won one award for overall newspaper design for the launch issue of its redesign and two for the redesign of the paper's Life and The Sunday Times' Life sections.

The ST digital team has been striving to hold readers' attention in innovative ways, said Mr Warren Fernandez, The Straits Times' editor and editor-in-chief of Singapore Press Holdings' English, Malay and Tamil Media Group.

He added: "Readers have many things to do, and to distract them, when they are online. To hold their attention and keep them coming back, we have to create content that is relevant and engaging.

"This is what our ST Digital team has been striving to do, and constantly looking for innovative and interesting ways to do so. The Excellence Awards from this respected industry group is great validation of these efforts."

• Check out the winning entries: How Joseph Schooling Achieved The Impossible http://str.sg/schoolingsgold Fleeing To Survive http://str.sg/fleetosurvive

Join ST's WhatsApp Channel and get the latest news and must-reads.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on March 01, 2017, with the headline ST wins 2 awards for digital news packages. Subscribe