SPH newspapers clinch "Best In Print" Silver Awards at 13th Asian Media Awards

SINGAPORE - Singapore Press Holdings' (SPH) daily newspapers - English flagship daily The Straits Times, Chinese language daily Lianhe Zaobao and Malay language daily Berita Harian - each won a "Best in Print" Silver Award at the 13th Asian Media Awards, as part of WAN-IFRA's Publish Asia 2014 in Hong Kong today.

Earlier this year, SPH had submitted these three newspaper titles for the bi-annual International Newspaper Color Quality Club (INCQC) competition. These submissions also automatically qualified them to compete for the Publish Asia's "Best in Print" Asian Media Awards.

The Asian Media Awards serves to promote the highest standards in the various aspects of newspaper and magazine design and publishing, and have attracted participants from all over Asia Pacific, South Asia and the Middle East. WAN-IFRA is the global association of newspapers and news publishers, representing more than 18,000 publications. 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries.

The "Best in Print" awards recognise the daily reproduction and print quality of Asian newspapers. The judging criteria is extensive and requires the participating newspaper titles to select and send 10 samples of an issue for each competition month (January, February and March 2014) for quality assessment by WAN-IFRA.

The evaluation of the samples is in two parts - Measurement and Visual Quality Inspection. Measurement is carried out on three randomly selected copies over a period of three competition months using a standard test pattern called cuboid to assess reproduction and print quality. Visual Quality Inspection is then carried out on two randomly selected newspaper copies by a pool of international jury print experts to review each newspaper copy, page by page, against a comprehensive list of print defects and assigning marks to them. Only copies with no defects receive the maximum marks.

Other SPH newspapers that have previously won the "Best in Print" accolades include the English-language business daily The Business Times and the Chinese-language evening daily Shin Min Daily News.

SPH is also a member of the WAN-IFRA's Star Club. The Star Club award is only presented to a company if it has successfully participated in at least 5 INCQC terms. SPH achieved this recognition in the year 2012 when The Straits Times met this requirement with successful entry in the years 2000, 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012. As of 2012, there were 22 companies in this exclusive Star Club. For INCQC 2014, the results will be announced in October this year by WAN-IFR A.

Mr Lim Swee Yeow, Senior Vice-President, Production, received the awards on behalf of SPH during the Asian Media Awards Gala Dinner which was held this evening at the Kowloon Shangri-La, Hong Kong.

Mr Alan Chan, Chief Executive Officer, SPH said: "Winning the three awards is recognition of SPH's excellent colour quality production and printing practices in newspapers. We are constantly striving not only to achieve the best print quality on a daily basis, but also introduce innovation that will allow our advertisers to effectively engage their customers and our readers."