The Prize Stories

This is a collection of the award-winning entries along with personal anecdotes by the winners, an initiative by The Express Group celebrating courage, enterprise and fairness. As part of the centenary year celebrations of its founder, Ramnath Goenka, The Express Group instituted the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards in 2004. The awards aim to celebrate excellence in journalism, recognise courage and commitment, and showcase outstanding contributions and indivisuals every year. The Excellence in Journalism Awards honour journalists from both print and broadcast media who have shown extraordinary strength of character and integrity while reporting news accurately under dangerous or difficult circumstances. This edition includes reports that exposed major issues or problems like the plight of women scavengers, stings on our politicians taking money, courageous tales of children living with HIV-AIDS, to the people of Chagliyar community who are treated worse than animals. These are stories that provoked the public to recognise a major wrong and raised public awareness of the issue. This year, the awards also include a new category, namely, excellence in HIV-AIDS reporting. This is part of the media advocacy initiatives of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and US Agency for International Development in collaboration with The Express Group. The award pay tribute to journalists who encourage public trust in the media by courageously practising the highest standards of their profession in the face of political or economic pressures.