Fast Company, BusinessWeek, Bloomberg win Overseas awards

Business magazines Fast Company and BusinessWeek, along with news service Bloomberg News, are among the winners in the annual Overseas Press Club Awards.

Richard Behar of Fast Company won the best magazine reporting from abroad award for his story about China’s increasing economic influence in Africa. The judges state, “Behar spent months on the road in Mozambique, Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Equatorial Guinea speaking with workers, businessmen and government leaders about one of the most important and neglected stories of recent years. The commitment of Fast Company to this project and Behar’s ability to turn the parasitic illness he contracted in Africa into a brilliant metaphor for the Chinese invasion made this award all the more satisfying to the judges.”

BusinessWeek won the Morton Frank Award for best business reporting abroad from a magazine for
“Cyber War.” The judges stated, “BusinessWeek took on a complex and difficult-to-report subject — cyber-intruders hacking into sensitive U.S. government computers, including those of NASA and the Pentagon — and meticulously built a case that this is happening and that it matters. This series is an exemplary model of investigative journalism — detailed, wide-ranging and compelling.”

Bloomberg News won the Malcolm Forbes award for best business reporting abroad in newspapers or news services for “Recipe for Famine.” The judges stated, “In “Recipe for Famine,” the staff of Bloomberg News took a big story, largely underplayed by most media, and examined it from a variety of angles, showing the interconnectedness of the food crisis and the sad truth that the crisis is largely manmade. In one story it shines a light on the 50-year old US food aid laws favoring American farmers and traders. The reporters use the narrative of an Ethiopian farmer and his family to show how those laws stalled the delivery of aid so long that many members of the farmer’s family died of malnutrition. Another story shows how a few businessmen manipulated the production and distribution of fertilizer, resulting in reduced food production and high prices. The reporters looked at ethanol production, often viewed as a welcome antidote to rising oil prices, and showed the knock-on effects of diverting corn to this purpose — a further reduction of food production.”

See all the winners here.