Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) is pleased to announce that The Washington Post’s Beijing Bureau Chief Anna Fifield is the 2018 recipient of the Shorenstein Journalism Award. The award, given annually by APARC, is conferred upon a journalist who has produced outstanding reporting on critical issues affecting Asia and has contributed significantly to greater understanding of the region.

Fifield has been selected in recognition of her exceptional work over a long career reporting on the Koreas, as well as on Japan and periodically other parts of Asia. She will receive the award at a special ceremony at Stanford on November 14, 2018. On that day, she will also headline an APARC-hosted panel discussion focusing on how North Korea is, and isn’t, changing under Kim Jong Un.

"We are delighted to honor Anna Fifield with the Shorenstein journalism award," says Gi-Wook Shin, Shorenstein APARC director. "Drawing on her knowledge of Asian societies and her remarkable ability to communicate insights to audiences all around the world, Anna exemplifies how crucial it is to get the complexities of Asia right and the profound role of journalism in shaping public and decision maker approaches to our counterparts in the region. Walter Shorenstein, APARC's benefactor and a champion of Asian-American relations, understood clearly that role. We are committed to upholding Walter's legacy with this award." 

As the Post's Tokyo bureau chief from 2014 to 2018, Fifield’s journalism focused primarily on Japan and the Koreas. During this period, she particularly concentrated on North Korea, working to shed light on the lives of ordinary people there and on how the regime managed to stay in power.

Fifield started as a journalist in her home country of New Zealand, then for 13 years was a correspondent for the Financial Times , covering nearly 20 countries and reporting from, among other places, Sydney, Seoul, Pyongyang, Tehran, Beirut, and finally Washington D.C., where she was White House correspondent and covered the 2012 President election campaign. Prior to joining The Washington Post, Fifield was a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, where she studied how change happens in closed societies.

“For many years, Anna Fifield has been the premier Western reporter on Korea, setting the standard for coverage of a story that occupies our front pages," notes Daniel Sneider, a member of the jury for the Shorenstein Award and a long-time foreign correspondent. "But she has also broadened her Asian expertise, as the Tokyo bureau chief for the Post and now in Beijing. She moves easily across the digital as well as the print space and is a crusader for diversity in sourcing. Anna Fifield, in short, is the very definition of a journalist in our modern era.”

Sixteen journalists have previously received the Shorenstein award, which carries a cash prize of $10,000. Among the award’s recent recipients are Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire and former editor of the The Hindu; Ian Johnson, a veteran journalist with a focus on Chinese society, religion, and history; and Yoichi Funabashi, former editor-in-chief of the Asahi Shimbun.

RSVPs for the Shorenstein award panel discussion are requested.

About the 2018 Shorenstein Journalism Award Panel Discussion and Award Ceremony

Shorenstein Journalism Award winner Anna Fifield will deliver a keynote speech and join a panel discussion focusing on how North Korea is, and isn’t, changing under Kim Jong Un. The panel includes Andray Abrahamian, the 2018-19 Koret Fellow in the Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC, and Barbara Demick, New York correspondent of the Los Angeles Times, former head of the bureaus in Beijing and Seoul, and the 2012 recipient of the Shorenstein Journalism Award. The panel will be chaired by Yong Suk Lee, SK Center Fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Deputy Director of the Korea Program at APARC.

November 14, 2018, 12:00 – 1:30 p.m. (PDT)

Fisher Conference Center at the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center, 326 Galvez St, Stanford, CA 94305

The panel discussion is open to the public. The award ceremony will take place in the evening for a private audience.

RSVPs for the panel discussion are requested.

About the Shorenstein Journalism Award

The Shorenstein Journalism Award, which carries a cash prize of $10,000, honors a journalist not only for a distinguished body of work, but also for the particular way in which that work has helped audiences around the world to understand the complexities of Asia. The award, established in 2002, was named after Walter H. Shorenstein, the philanthropist, activist, and businessman who endowed two institutions that are focused respectively on Asia and on the press: the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University, and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In 2010, Shorenstein APARC expanded the scope of the award that since then has recognized Asian journalists who, in addition to their professional excellence and contribution to knowledge of Asia, have helped defend and build a free media in their home countries.

Media contact:
Noa Ronkin, Associate Director for Communications and External Relations
noa.ronkin@stanford.edu
(650) 724-5667