Overseas Press Club hands out business reporting awards

The Overseas Press Club has awarded the New York Times and Vanity Fair its awards for international business reporting.

Michael Lewis won the Morton Frank Award for business reporting from abroad in magazines for “Wall Street on the Tundra” in Vanity Fair.

Judges said the article was “a richly reported and engaging account of Iceland’s incredible financial bubble. Lewis calls Iceland’s experiment with hedge funds and other Wall Street-inspired financial engineering instruments ‘one of the single greatest acts of madness in financial history.’ The country’s economy traditionally was based on fishing, aluminum and geothermal energy. When men who had worked on fishing boats put down their rods and took up banking overnight, they set the stage for the economy’s ultimate collapse. Lewis also distinguished his story by demonstrating that Iceland’s gender-segregated male-dominated culture played a role in the reckless risk-taking.”

Keith Bradsher, the Hong Kong bureau chief of the Times, won the Malcolm Forbes award for business reporting from abroad in newspapers or wire services for “Green China.”

The judges said Bradsher “shows in his compelling coverage over the past year, this push is complicated by the juxtaposition between China’s hopes – to own and define the world’s new green economic future – and its reality, as the world’s largest polluter. While it has the power and resources to radically reduce carbon emissions, the country’s desire for rapid growth often takes it in the opposite direction. The world’s largest polluter can thus become the world’s largest consumer of wind. A country on the cutting edge of green technologies can nevertheless tolerate toxic runoff and substandard incinerators that damage the health of its own people. For his insightful, enterprising and nuanced look at the contradictions and promise of China’s green push, the OPC is pleased to give its Malcolm Forbes Award to Keith Bradsher.”

Read about all of the winners here.