Journalism trek started at age 6

Her journey to becoming this year's Journalist of the Year began at the tender age of six.

Straits Times (ST) journalist Joyce Lim recalls following her mother, then a part-time newspaper vendor, on her morning paper runs.

Her mother, who died of cancer in 2002, would read articles from the national broadsheet to her daily.

She already knew, way back then, that she wanted to be a journalist.

The 39-year-old bagged one of the top awards at the annual English and Malay Newspaper Division (EMND) Awards yesterday, at which ST clinched nine out of the 15 awards.

These included Headline of the Year, and Feature Picture and Commentary of the Year.

The Business Times' Samuel Ee took home the other top award of the evening - the Story of the Year - for his scoop, "Loan curbs to slam brakes on car demand?", in which he broke the news that the Government would be re-introducing car-loan curbs.

His colleague, Ms Andrea Soh, 27, won the Young Journalist of the Year.

The New Paper won two awards: Infographics of the Year by senior infographics journalist Kelvin Chan for his infographic explaining the Government's White Paper - a road map towards Singapore's population in 2030 - and News Picture of the Year by photographer Jonathan Choo for his picture taken during the Little India riot in December last year.

Other award winners included Straits Times journalists Radha Basu and Rachel Chang, who clinched Feature of the Year and Commentary of the Year respectively.

EMND editor-in-chief Patrick Daniel, who attended the awards ceremony held at Singapore Press Holdings' News Centre, said: "The aim of our monthly and annual awards is to recognise and celebrate excellent work that's done each day by journalists in all our papers... We can all be proud of the work done by our award-winners, be they journalists, photographers or artists."

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