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ST bags five Asian Digital Media Awards

This article is more than 12 months old

The Straits Times was recognised yesterday for its efforts to engage a younger audience online and explore innovative ways to tell stories.

ST won five awards at the 10th edition of the Asian Digital Media Awards. The flagship title of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) bagged two golds, two silvers and one bronze at the award ceremony.

Organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (Wan-Ifra), the awards recognise publishers that have adopted digital media and mobile strategies to meet the major changes in how people consume news and information.

Fifteen judges scrutinised 151 entries sent by 24 media companies from 11 countries in Asia.

Clinching the gold award in social media engagement was News Challenge, a current affairs quiz on ST's Instagram account that tests how well informed users are of news.

Launched in May, it has helped grow ST's Instagram account, which saw its follower base increase by more than 60 per cent this year to 230,000.

Winning the bronze award in the same category was another ST project, Where's Merly? A National Day game challenge for Singaporeans.

ST also emerged top in the Best Paid Content Strategy category, winning the gold award for a machine-learning tool used on its website to customise user experience.

Its interactive graphic, War on waste: The dirty (brown) secret about e-commerce clinched the silver award for Best in Lifestyle, Sports, Entertainment Website or Mobile Services.

ST and BT also jointly won silver for Best Digital Project to Engage Younger and/or Millennial Audiences.

ST editor Warren Fernandez, who is also editor-in-chief of SPH's English/Malay/Tamil Media Group, said: "Ultimately, these awards are about our readers, whom we want to serve well, across all our platforms. Winning these awards shows that we are making good progress as we transform our newsrooms to become more audience-centred, data-driven, multimedia operations. "- VANESSA LIU

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