Default blog head, but it says it all. Alongside an overdue revamp of my static Web site, this here spot is where you can find news and new stuff on a more regular basis.
Like, for instance, the small paper in Cambodia that I work for recently winning two big regional awards. The photo above was one in a five-picture submission that won excellence in news photography at this year's Society of Publishers in Asia annual awards. The entry, focusing on The Phnom Penh Post's coverage of forced evictions of some 3,000 families to make way for a commercial project, included three images from Vandy Rattana's photo essay and a single from reporter Chhay Channyda. I shot the picture above the day the company contracted by Shukaku Inc, a private developer tied to a ruling party senator, began pumping sand into the lake to fill it in for redevelopment. The lake, Boeung Kak, is the capital's largest natural reservoir, and its reclamation will displace at least 3,000 families. The boy in the photo lived next door to the pipe, and was thus one of the first to be forced out.
The Post also won an award for exellence in human right reporting, for May Titthara and Christopher Shay's article on Cambodians trafficked into forced labor on Thai fishing boats.
Our entries were in the local newspapers and small magazine group, competing against veterans like the South China Morning Post and the Far Eastern Economic Review as well as newcomers The Jakarta Globe and MINT. The heavyweights division had the IHT, FT, Time Asia, Newsweek and Asian Wall Street Journal duking it out. And, the only outfits in our group that came away with multiple first-place awards were the Post and SCMP. Not bad for the new kid.
