hankyoreh

The Hankyoreh building in Seoul. (Hankyoreh archives)

Over the past 30 years, Hankyoreh journalists have won the Reporter of the Month award, chosen by the Journalists Association of Korea, 134 times, setting a record for the Korean press. Since September 1990, the association has used the award to recognize reporters who produced outstanding articles over the past month.

Since 1990, a total of 11,840 articles have been nominated for the Reporter of the Month award, with 2,109 receiving the award. On average, 32.9 articles have been nominated and 5.9 awarded each month. The number of nominated articles has steadily risen, from 88 in 1991 to a peak of 696 in 2018.

“That appears to be the result of intensifying competition among reporters for the prize as the number of media outlets has soared and the number of companies enrolled in the association has grown,” the Journalists Association of Korea said.

Hankyoreh reporter Ha Eo-yeong, who has been awarded the Reporter of the Month award by the Journalists Association of Korea 14 times. (Hankyoreh archives)

With 134 prize-winning articles, the Hankyoreh is the media outlet that has won the competition the most times over the past 30 years. Hankyoreh reporters joined the association in 1999, 11 years after it was established. That was when they started winning the Reporter of the Month award.

KBS came in second with 122 awards, followed by the Dong-a Ilbo (104), the Kyunghyang Shinmun and the Joongang Ilbo (100), and SBS (96).

Among regional newspapers, the Busan Ilbo has taken home the most prizes, at 76. Other leading prize winners were the Kyeongin Ilbo (63), the Kookje Shinmun (38), Daegu MBC (28), and Busan MBC (24).

The Hankyoreh was also the home of five of the top 11 reporters ranked by number of prizes received, more than any other outlet. Hankyoreh reporter Ha Eo-yeong came in first, with 14 awards. Jeong Hwan-bong has won the prize 12 times, Lim In-taek and Choe Hyeon-jun 10 times, and Ryu I-geun nine times.

The rubric for judging the Reporter of the Month award assigns 30 points for impact, 25 for originality, 25 for timeliness, and 20 for depth.

One of the judges for the award is Lee Hui-yong, a reporter with Yonhap News. “In the past, we focused on scoops and breaking news, but lately, we’ve been placing more emphasis on investigative reporting and in-depth features that require a great deal of effort and on covering incidents that would have been buried if not dug up by the press. One interesting trend over the past few years is that more media outlets are doing meaningful work with big data.”

By Moon Hyun-sook, media correspondent

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