Keynote speaker Jose Antonio Vargas at Ippies Awards. NAM PHOTO
NEW YORK, New York — Online ethnic media took home top awards at the 12th Annual Ippies Awards on Thursday, June 5.
The Ippies are given to ethnic and community media in the New York Metropolitan area by the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Journalism.
Feetin2Worlds and Long Island Press both won three awards, including “Best Multimedia Package,” “Best Audio” and “Best Story about an Immigrant Community,” respectively.
“We are so proud of our reporters, producers and contributors,” John Rudolph, executive producer of Feetin2Worlds, said in an e-mail he sent to the Media Consortium group.
The top winner of the night, however, was DNAinfo.com with four awards, including “Best Investigative/In-depth Story,” which exposed that only a tiny fraction of the millions of dollars raised through the AIDS Walk goes to HIV services, while the rest pays for overhead, executive salaries and administrative costs.
Other top winners were SinoVision, Tablet Magazine, Allewaa Alarabi, and City Limits. Secondary prizes were conferred to El Diario La Prensa, Sing Tao Daily, Diario de Mexico, Desi Talk, News India Times and the World Journal.
“Year by year, I found that the Ippies Awards are getting more and more competitive,” said Rong Xiaoqing, a senior reporter for Sing Tao Daily, who has consistently won every year since the Ippies was first established by the Independent Press Association-New York in 2003, and are now given annually by the Center for Community and Ethnic Media (CCEM) at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.
While Xiaoqing won second place this year for her investigative piece on the mental health of students at Stuyvesant High School, she says that winning seemed to be an “uphill road” that she had to take.
“But what makes it more exciting than just winning an award is to see high-quality works from folks in the ethnic and independent media,” Xiaoqing added. “This also makes winning more fun.”
The 2014 Ippies Awards, hosted by Randall Pinkston, a correspondent for Al Jazeera America, were attended by hundreds of journalists, students, professors and independent groups supporting the New York’s ethnic and community press.
A special Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Edward Lewis, co-founder of Essence Communications, Inc., one of the largest African American multimedia companies in the country.
In an effort to raise the visibility of the ethnic and community media sector, Garry Pierre-Pierre, executive director of CCEM, noted in his introductory speech during the ceremony that the center is planning to conduct an annual “State of the Ethnic Media” survey, as well as continue to provide trainings for journalists and conduct briefings with New York politicians and newsmakers.
The ceremony’s keynote speaker was Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer winner for the Washington Post, who came out as an undocumented immigrant in a 2011 New York Times story that he penned. Vargas was a reporter for New America Media’s YO! Youth Outlook.
This year, the Ippies received over 150 entries from about 50 in-language and English ethnic and community media in New York City. A panel of judges selected first, second and third place winners in nine categories.
No award, according to a press release, was given this year for “Best Editorial/Commentary.”
For a complete list of winners of the 2014 Ippies Awards, click here.