PAP’s official organ wins journalism accolades

by

BHAVAN JAIPRAGAS

July 16th, 2010

The People’s Action Party’s official organ Petir garnered two awards at this year’s
Magnum Opus awards.

In its seventh year, the Magnum Opus award recognises writers, editors, designers, and communication managers who excel in traditional and online media. The competition has been receiving hundreds of entries each year from all over the world, in more than 200 categories. The award is organised by Contentwise, a leading interactive publication covering best practices in media content production, and the acclaimed Missouri School of Journalism.

Petir received the bronze award in the best series of articles category, for the three part series titled ‘50 years of government’. The series was published to mark the Party’s golden anniversary governing Singapore, chronicling the Party’s achievements and challenges since it came to power in 1959. The magazine’s September/October issue titled ’50 years at the helm’ also received a honourable mention for best special topic issue.

The accolades can be seen as a major milestone for the magazine, whose first issue was published not long after the PAP was founded in 1954. Its first writers were the nation’s founding fathers themselves, with C V Devan Nair, Lee Kuan Yew and S Rajaratnam all frequent contributors to the magazine. In recent times, Cabinet ministers have taken turns to pen the magazine’s editorials, using it as an opportunity to outline policies and reach out to the Party’s members.

Petir’s success at the awards underscored the overall solid performance of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) at the awards. Petir is published by Focus Publishing Ltd, a subsidiary of SPH. SPH magazines such as Pinnacle, Singapore Nautilus and MGZines also featured in this year’s awards.

Click here to read more about SPH’s performance at the 2010 Magnum Opus Awards.

Click here to view the full list of the award’s winners.