Rest of World contributors were honored in the Outstanding Arts, Culture and Lifestyles and Business Reporting categories.
We are thrilled to share that Andrew Deck and Raksha Kumar have won the South Asian Journalists Association’s Outstanding Arts, Culture and Lifestyles Reporting Award for their feature Vigilantes for views. Varsha Bansal won the award for Outstanding Business Reporting, which included her work for Rest of World and Wired.
Deck and Kumar’s article focused on scambaiting, the phenomenon of content creators pranking alleged scam callers for a sense of vigilante justice — and YouTube views. The piece explores how a U.S.-based YouTube Channel came to target call center workers in Kolkata, India for a series of increasingly alarming “pranks,” one of which would become one of YouTube’s top 10 trending videos of the year. The two journalists reported in tandem from Los Angeles and Kolkata, spending time with those on both sides of the scambaiting controversy: the YouTubers who orchestrate the pranks, and the call center workers they target.
Andrew Deck was a reporter for Rest of World and is currently a staff writer at Nieman Lab. Raksha Kumar is a Fulbright scholar and journalist who writes on social injustices, gender, and politics.
Varsha Bansal has been a longtime contributor for Rest of World, and her award highlighted the series of reporting she did last year on India’s gig workers, including her article Meet the most powerful Uber driver in India, a profile of the Indian driver-turned-union leader who is brushing shoulders with top politicians and giving ride-hailing firms a run for their money. She is currently a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
For the full list of winners and finalists, you can see SAJA’s release here.
Published in Rest of World
Published on October 15, 2024
Link: Rest of World’s reporting wins two awards at the South Asian Journalists Association 2024 Awards