The Star wins big at digital media awards

Industry recognition: Yee (left) and Yeoh showing the three trophies picked up by The Star at the awards ceremony held at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Star was a big winner at the Asian Digital Media Awards (ADMA), bagging one gold and two silver awards for its new media innovations.

The gold award, in the Best in Cross Media Advertising category, was for The Star's iSnap augmented reality technology, which allows newspaper readers to access and interact with multimedia content on their smartphones.

“We were the first newspaper to use augmented reality in Malaysia, and this award proves we are on the right track,” said The Star deputy group chief editor I David Yeoh last night.

“This technology helps to bring the paper alive, not only for news content, but for advertising as well.”

R.AGE, the youth section of The Star, also bagged two silver awards at the ceremony in the Best in Social Media and Best in Cross Media (editorial coverage) categories.

R.AGE also won the Best in Social Media gold award last year, as well as the World Young Reader Prize earlier this year.

The team of four journalists at R.AGE manages and produces content for a variety of platforms, which include print, radio and online (YouTube, Twitter and Facebook).

They also organise youth events such as BRATs, The Star's long-running young journalists programme.

“It is a real honour to be recognised by ADMA again,” said R.AGE acting editor Ian Yee.

“A lot of people are surprised when I tell them I write for the youth platform of a newspaper company. They always say young people don't read newspapers!'

“But The Star has never stopped supporting us, and the fact that we a youth platform have been given this award, shows that it is possible to engage young people through news content, and they are interested in being engaged. You just have to find the right content, and the right channels.”

ADMA is organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).

The awards ceremony was held at a hotel here in conjunction with the three-day Digital Media Asia 2012 conference, which ends today.