One year ago, I woke up and was surprised to find out the great news that I was selected as the winner of Thomson Foundations Young Journalist Award 2021. This was unthinkable and incredible, as I thought I was just a novice, and it was impossible to receive such prestigious recognition on the global stage.
I worked with a leading online news portal in Malaysia, whose primary focus was on domestic political news. Things that I passionately cover - for instance, environmental issues, gender issues, and investigative reporting - are sometimes deemed peripheral and not urgent. The award was an encouraging recognition of my stubbornness and persistence in covering these peripheral issues. It was also a reassurance to the editors who supported me by allocating the space and resources for me. I believe my receiving of the award also empowers other young journalists, too.
Currently, I am pursuing my Master's degree in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies in Taiwan; at the same time, striving to become an independent journalist and continue to write about the issues that matter, with a more particular focus on gender and sexuality. Sometimes, it feels like leaving a giant vessel and still learning to navigate the infinite sea in my small boat.
Receiving the award gave me some confidence to sail further. It brought many precious connections, which led me to broader opportunities to work with journalists, newsrooms and organisations that care about ethical and quality journalism.
Given the authoritarianism resurging in certain Asian countries, I would also like to send a word to all young and veteran journalists working in similar or even more challenging news environments: Let's hang on. Let's continue to hold the line together.
For more information on this years Young Journalist Award finalists, please see this page. The winner will be announced on November 28th 2022.
#TFYoungJournalist
Related content
Revealing the 2022 Young Journalist Award finalists
Meet this years YJA finalists
Persistence pays off
Meet our 2021 Young Journalist winner, Kai Hui Wong from Malaysia
The compassionate face of Peru
Meet our 2020 Young Journalist winner, Mart n Leandro Camacho from Peru
Explore our projects across the globe
More from Thomson
24/11/2023
The three finalists for the Thomson Foundation Young Journalist of the Year 2023 enjoyed an action-packed trip to London which included meeting the Queen, visit...
21/11/2023
Yara El Murr from Lebanon is Thomson Foundation's Young Journalist of the Year 2023.
Yara received the honour at the Foreign Press Association Media Award...
17/11/2023
Yashraj Sharma has seen big changes in his life since he won the Thomson Foundation Young Journalist Award in 2022.
In the run up to the 2023 winner being anno...
10/11/2023
Thomson Foundation has joined 16 partner organisations to launch the Paris Charter on AI and Journalism'. The first of its kind, the charter defines crucia...
01/11/2023
Zuha Siddiqui from Pakistan is a labour and tech reporting fellow for the global non-profit publication Rest of World. She's one of three finalists nominate...
01/11/2023
Jamaima Afridi is a freelance journalist based in north-west Pakistan on the edge of the Khyber Pass.
Her stories focus on injustices faced by women and vulne...
01/11/2023
Yara El Murr is a 25-year-old journalist and documentary filmmaker from Lebanon. She is a finalist in Thomson Foundations Young Journalist Award 2023.
The awar...
01/11/2023
Young journalists from more than 60 countries entered this years prestigious Thomson Foundation Young Journalist Award 2023.
Countries from across Africa, Asia...
26/10/2023
The 2023 EU Award for Investigative Journalism has proven to be an exceptional showcase of talent, diversity and shifting journalistic priorities.
More than 20...
16/10/2023
Thomson Foundation is delighted to announce the appointment of two new members to its Board of Trustees - investment expert, author and former financial journal...
12/10/2023
Some of the world's leading foreign correspondents and war crimes investigators have contributed to a set of major new training courses for journalists cove...
05/10/2023
Thomson Foundation is delighted to be one of five new organisations to join Partnership on AI.
Thomson is now one of 114 partner organisations from around the ...
28/09/2023
An astonishing array of talented journalists from around the world have made it through to the shortlist for the Thomson Foundation Young Journalist Award 2023....
18/09/2023
Madhav Chinnappa, the former Director of News Ecosystem Development at Google an...
14/09/2023
Thomson works with journalists in some of the toughest places in the world. Their work and livelihoods are frequently under threat. Thomson Foundation believes ...
05/09/2023
A pioneering system aimed at preventing the spread of disinformation and creating verifiable content from capture to publication is being road tested in a serie...
15/08/2023
To mark the Thomson Foundation's 60th year of nurturing and training journalists globally, we matched six talented young journalists with six of the best in...
07/08/2023
In the autumn of 2022, I was introduced to a young Afghan journalist in London. Zahra Joya had fled Kabul a year before as the Taliban swept through the city. A...
27/07/2023
Pursuing independent journalism is more important than ever. Right now, we are not just facing one or two crises. The crises that journalists are facing are not...
05/07/2023
KC Saranga has trained more than 1,000 journalists, students and people in marginalised communities in Sri Lanka on how to tell stories using their mobile phone...
04/07/2023
A total of 267 applications from 7 countries, representing 125 media outlets and featuring a diverse group of authors (both individuals and groups), have been s...
03/07/2023
Since 2013 our Young Journalist Award has celebrated the outstanding young talent in the media profession. The award is an opportunity for those brilliant young...
28/06/2023
A new project is underway in the Western Balkans to transform digital storytelling and engage public audiences with creative and culture-related content.
Aroun...
19/06/2023
Staying informed about everyday life and events in Ukraine is crucially important for the refugees who have fled the war.
By April 2023, 1.06 million Ukrai...
14/06/2023
Equipped with new investigative journalism skills and financial support after recently completing a training programme, 15 Rwandan journalists are empowered to ...
22/05/2023
The Thomson Foundation is proud to unveil a pioneering free, online training course designed to help newsrooms address a defining issue of the modern age: the e...
12/05/2023
Sixty years after it was founded Thomson Foundation - now joined by the Berlin based Thomson Media, continues to innovate. Its blended approach to life-long lea...
09/05/2023
Journalists from Western Balkans countries and T rkiye are invited to submit their investigative stories for the EU Award for Investigative Journalism 2023.
On...
06/05/2023
The onslaught of false news against real news is unprecedented. In the Middle East, an alarming trend of people doubting published news is overwhelming, Mohamm...
04/05/2023
This article is written by Vitalie Cojocari, a journalist and broadcaster with Euronews in Romania. He is a mentor for the Thomson Media project EU support for ...
26/04/2023
Three months after Thomson Foundation offered six young journalists a once-in-a-lifetime chance', its world-class mentoring programme Connect 6' is re...
25/04/2023
Despite reports to the contrary, radio isn't dead. In fact, not only has it been revived but its combined with its close cousins, the podcast and the long r...
25/03/2023
To increase women's participation; these four words, written down in four seconds, in a proposal can take months, if not years to achieve.
Especially, wh...
24/03/2023
When I started out as an investigative journalist, there were few practising journalists in Kenya to learn from or manuals that I could read to sharpen my skill...
23/03/2023
Journalists in the Western Balkans have been given access to free resources and training in their own languages thanks to a unique platform launched by Thomson ...
22/03/2023
One million refugees have been welcomed into Germany since the Russian invasion who aside from being far from home have lost contact with their community and in...
21/03/2023
Millions of people in Tajikistan have read, watched and listened to an extraordinary social media campaign which has clearly shown the population's hunger f...
08/03/2023
It's August in Pakistan and much of the country is underwater. Catastrophic flooding has killed hundreds, left millions homeless and destroyed infrastructur...
15/02/2023
A strong, fearless and effective media, where talent is recognised and rewarded regardless of gender. That's the goal of She Leads Media: Bettina Fellowshi...
07/02/2023
Our pioneering WhatsApp course is leading the way in training journalists and citizens to spot misinformation and disinformation in Sudan - a country targeted b...
03/02/2023
The finale of the third Valley Voices project saw women journalists and writers gain confidence in writing about some of the more controversial topics facing wo...
23/01/2023
Take six of the brightest young journalists and connect them to six of the best in the industry and you have the recipe for Connect 6', a new, world-class ...
10/01/2023
You're a journalist and news breaks that Pele, arguably the greatest footballer the world has ever known, has died. A colleague in your newsroom is assigned...
14/12/2022
Two former winners of the Vodacom Young Journalist of the Year award in South Africa have finally been treated to their prize of an all-expenses paid trip to Lo...
08/12/2022
Sabin Agha is a Pakistan-based documentary filmmaker, multimedia journalist and a blogger. She has been teaching women journalists at Tribal News Network (TNN)...
29/11/2022
Yashraj Sharma is the interim editor of the online news portal of The Kashmir Walla. He is the winner of the Thomson Foundation's Young Journalist Award 202...
25/11/2022
Yashraj Sharma is the interim editor of the online news portal of The Kashmir Walla. He is a finalist in Thomson Foundation's Young Journalist Award 2022.
...
24/11/2022
Jyoti Yadav is a journalist from New Delhi, working for India's fastest growing news website The Print. She is a finalist in Thomson Foundation's Young ...
23/11/2022
Carlos Ra l Kestler is a 23-year-old journalist from Guatemala. He is a finalist in Thomson Foundation's Young Journalist Award 2022.
Every time a tyre t...
21/11/2022
One year ago, I woke up and was surprised to find out the great news that I was selected as the winner of Thomson Foundations Young Journalist Award 2021. This ...
One year ago, I woke up and was surprised to find out the great news that I was selected as the winner of Thomson Foundations Young Journalist Award 2021. This was unthinkable and incredible, as I thought I was just a novice, and it was impossible to receive such prestigious recognition on the global stage.
