The Shorenstein Journalism Award, which carries a cash prize of $10,000, honors a journalist not only for a distinguished body of work, but also for the particular way that work has helped American readers to understand the complexities of Asia. The award, established in 2002, was named after Walter H. Shorenstein, the philanthropist, activist, and businessman who endowed two institutions that are focused respectively on Asia and on the press: the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University, and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

The award was originally designed to honor distinguished American journalists for their work on Asia, including veteran correspondents for leading American media such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, NBC News, PBS, and the Wall Street Journal. The first group of awardees included: Stanley Karnow, Orville Schell, Don Oberdorfer, Nayan Chanda, Melinda Liu, John Pomfret, Ian Buruma, Seth Mydans, and Barbara Crossette.

Shorenstein APARC believes that it is vital to continue the Shorenstein Journalism Award, not only to honor the legacy of Walter Shorenstein and his twin passions for Asia and the press, but also to promote the necessity of a free and vibrant media for the future of relations between Asia and the United States. Moreover, as we have seen recently in the Middle East, a free press, not only in its traditional forms of print and broadcast but now also via the Internet and new avenues of social media, remains the essential catalyst for the growth of democratic freedom.

In 2011, Shorenstein APARC re-envisioned the award in recognition of the fact that Asia has served as a crucible for the role of the press in democratization in places such as South Korea, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, and Indonesia. It has also figured greatly in the emergence of social media and citizen journalism. New tests of the role of the media are emerging in China, Vietnam, and other authoritarian societies in Asia. Will the Internet be a catalyst for change, or can it also be a carrier of new forms of cyber nationalism and an instrument of authoritarian control? How are Asia’s journalists responding to that challenge?

The award now encompasses distinguished Asian journalists who are at the forefront of the battle for press freedom in Asia and who have played a key role in constructing a new role for the media, including the growth of social media and Internet-based journalism. It also seeks to identify those Asian journalists who, from that side of the Pacific Ocean, have aided the growth of mutual understanding between Asia and the United States.

Continuing as an annual tradition, the Shorenstein Journalism Award now alternates between recipients from the West, who have mainly addressed an American audience, and recipients from Asia.

Jury members

Ian Buruma
Henry R. Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism, Bard College

Nayan Chanda
Director of Publications, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

Susan Chira
Assistant Managing Editor for News, the New York Times

Donald K. Emmerson
Director, Southeast Asia Forum, Shorenstein APARC

Orville Schell
Arthur Ross Director, Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations

Daniel C. Sneider
Associate Director for Research, Shorenstein APARC