SPH and SPH Foundation award scholarships to 29 recipients

Singapore

THE ongoing coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of journalism, as more people turn to trusted media sources for reliable information to cope with the uncertainties brought about by Covid-19, said Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) chairman Lee Boon Yang on Monday.

He added that SPH has been seeing an increase in subscription and readerships especially for its digital titles. SPH is a media and property group which publishes The Business Times.

Dr Lee was speaking at the SPH and SPH Foundation scholarship awards ceremony held virtually on July 27. The ceremony was live-streamed on YouTube.

This year, 29 scholarships were awarded, of which two were for the SPH journalism scholarship.

Wong Yang, 21, is one of the two recipients.

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During his internship at The New Paper this year, he saw firsthand how Covid-19 had disrupted the lives of various groups of people - ranging from migrant workers to retrenched workers - and was determined to "do justice to the stories" they were telling him.

"The experience has made me believe, more than ever, in the potential for journalism to drive social change," he said.

He will begin his undergraduate studies in comparative literature and social anthropology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland this September, although his classes may be held online due to the novel coronavirus situation.

Osmond Chia, 24, received the mid-term journalism scholarship. He is pursuing a degree in communication studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Meanwhile, 14 scholarships were presented to children of SPH staff and newspaper vendors, to support their studies at the junior college, polytechnic and university levels. The bond-free Lim Kim San Memorial Scholarship was awarded to 13 students from modest family backgrounds, to help them further their degree programmes in languages, linguistics and the humanities at local universities.