At the NSW Premier’s Multicultural Communications Awards 2023 (PMCAs) held last night, Indian Link brought home two journalism awards.
It took out the Publication of the Year Award, and team member Suhayla Sharif claimed the Alan Knight Student Award.
“We’re over the moon – literally and figuratively,” Editor Rajni Anand Luthra laughed. “We’ve spent the day putting out stories about India’s moon landing, and here we are finishing off the night with two trophies in our hands.”
The Publication of the Year Award this year is the fourth such for Indian Link, having won it before in 2018, 2015 and 2013.
“It’s great to be acknowledged again,” Indian Link CEO Pawan Luthra said after receiving the honour from NSW Premier Chris Minns. “Since the last time this came our way, we have solidified further our role as providers of objective and reliable information, and have continued to build trust as agents of societal incorporation as well as cultural preservation.”
The role of the media group might well have moved beyond these responsibilities, according to Rajni.
“In the last couple of years we’ve broken the community barrier and moved into a ‘post multicultural’ Australia, where new integrative realities have begun to play out,” she described. “Our work is increasingly being picked up by the mainstream media, to which we take our diverse perspective on the many issues that affect us all as Australians – whether population, education, migration, politics, finance or lifestyle. As we share our views from a ‘New Australian’ nuance, we are reinventing ourselves as ‘post multicultural’ media.”
She added, “Such enrichment is not possible without creative energies coming from a multitude of sources. Pawan and I are in debt of our team members – our small but hard-working team punches above its weight. Charu Vij, Sagar Mehrotra, Ash Reynolds, Torsha Sen, Kerry Said, Bedashree Gogoi, Suhayla Sharif, Lakshmi Ganapathy, Vivek Asri, Aanchal Matta, Shailesh Tinker – we did it again, and we did it together.”
Pawan also acknowledged the vast team of contributors, some of who have been writing for Indian Link for two decades. “What a great team – Ritam Mitra, Prutha Chakraborty, Sandip Hor, Petra O’Neill, LP Ayer, Dhanya Samuel, Usha Arvind, Kersi Meher Homji, Neeru Saluja, Virat Nehru, amongst others. Through their work, they’re all playing a role in developing multicultural attitudes, and fostering multicultural stability.”
He added, “A note of thanks also to our advertisers, valued supporters who are just as important as our creative contributors.”
As a creative contributor herself, Alan Knight Student Award 2023 winner Suhayla Sharif of UTS has been working with Indian Link for just over a year.
“For the first time as writer, I have no words,” she said after receiving her award from Kathy Egea, wife of Prof. Alan Knight, former Head of Journalism at UTS. “I’m so overwhelmed yet overjoyed to have received the award at a stage where I’m still finding my feet as a storyteller. It feels incredible to know perspectives like mine are being recognised and rewarded by community leaders who are embracing the evolving face of our diverse nation. It makes me hopeful knowing that the voices being celebrated are those of multicultural Australians, especially women of colour, and I’m incredibly lucky to be one of them. I hope to use this award as a stepping stone into a career where I can authentically continue amplifying the voices that further weave diversity into the fabric of multicultural Australia.”
Rajni said, “In the short time Suhayla has been with us, she has impressed us with her pieces particularly in the Arts and Culture space, her can-do attitude and her industriousness. So very proud of her. I’m certain she will go on to a successful career in journalism.”
Following this year’s NSW Premier’s Multicultural Communications Awards 2023, the number of media awards in the Indian Link kitty (since they were instituted in 2012) now stands at 27.
Not a bad report card, as the media group wraps up 29 years since inception.
READ ALSO: PCMAs 2022: Two more gongs for Indian Link
