Another feather in the cap for R.AGE

Dream team: Yee and R.AGE journalist Samantha Chow posing with their World Digital Media Award trophy in front of the iconic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany.

BERLIN: It was a proud moment for the young journalists of R.AGE as the team was given yet another global prize.

Malaysia’s highly-acclaimed documentary journalism team bagged its latest international award, a World Digital Media Award, here during a ceremony in front of some of the world’s biggest international publishers.

Three journalists from R.AGE made the trip to receive the award, in the Best Innovation to Engage Youth Audiences category, and meet up with potential international collaborators.

“It’s absolutely insane because there are people here from news organisations we really look up to.

“And to be able to show them a glimpse of our work back in Malaysia and get that recognition just felt incredible,” said R.AGE deputy executive editor and producer Ian Yee on Tuesday.

The World Digital Media Awards is only open to the winners of the Digital Media Awards in seven regions – North America, South America, Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Other winners at the global event this year include The New York Times, The Guardian and South China Morning Post.

R.AGE was founded in 2005 as a print pullout in The Star for college students.

In late 2015, Star Media Group revamped the brand into a video journalism outfit, and the young journalists started pursuing hard-hitting investigative pieces, including the ground-breaking Predator in My Phone undercover probes.

Since then, R.AGE has won 12 major awards, including the 2016 World Young Reader Prize in Washington DC, United Nations Malaysia Award, Asian Media Awards, and the Kajai Award.

Its most recent award was at the 2017 SOPA Awards, where other finalists included The New York Times, The Washington Post and Financial Times.

“We’ve definitely come a long way, especially when you consider that back in 2015, we were just five young journalists with a big idea.

“But we stuck to our guns and kept telling stories that actually help people, and thankfully, that has brought us to the world stage,” said Yee.

R.AGE’s current projects include Student/Trafficked, an undercover investigation of international human trafficking via colleges in Malaysia (rage.com.my/trafficked), and Eye on the Ball, a feature-length documentary on the Malaysian national blind football team (fb.com/eyeontheballfilm).

The World Digital Media Awards was organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) as part of the IFRA World Publishing Expo.

To find out more about R.AGE’s work, follow them on Facebook at fb.com/thestarRAGE, or email them at [e-mail].