Mathrubhumi.com wins at WAN IFRA’s South Asian Digital Media Awards 2020

Mathrubhumi received the award for the article titled’ Lockdownil Pranayuviny Jeevanvechu’ regarding the improvement in air quality in Kerala during the lockdown period.

Mathrubhumi.com the digital news platforms of mathrubhumi group was recently conferred with a bronze metal at South Asian Digital Media Awards 2020 jointly presented by Wan – IFRA, (World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers,).

Creating its impact in the industry the metal was honoured to Mathrubhumi under Best Data Visualisation. The article titled’ Lockdownil Pranayuviny Jeevanvechu’ highlighted and explained the difference in air quality in different cities after the lockdown was implemented. The article was selected for illustrating the quality of air in various Indian cities using graphs.

Speaking about the award, Ramachandran O.R, Executive Editor (Periodicals & Digital) Mathrubhumi said” This award winning visualisation is on the unbelievable air quality changes happened during lock down period in India. It is based on the air quality data published by Central Pollution Control Board on their website. They took measurements of 6 air quality elements from 120 cities in India during the four stages of lockdown and compared it with the observed values of the same elements 30 days before lockdown. We analysed the entire data and took a subset of the data having measurements from cities of Kerala and selected cities outside Kerala and made a sun burst visualisation of this data. This visualisation reveals the rise in air quality happened in the cities of Kerala during lockdown. This conveys a positive message to our readers about the reasons behind the rising air pollution of the state and the need of keeping it clean. The whole package was the result of journalistic passion ignited with technology and team work”.

The South Asian digital media awards presented by WAN –IFRA, recognise publishers who have adopted digital media and mobile strategies as part of their total product offering to meet the major changes in how people consume news today. Wan-IFRA digital media awards are presented in every region across the world and the winners from each region subsequently compete for the world digital media awards.

South Asian Digital Media Awards are presented in ten different categories including Best Website, Audience Engagement, Native Advertising / Branded Content, Paid Content Strategy, News Literacy and COVID-19 Projects among others. Twenty judges from across the globe evaluated the entries and selected winners. The winners will be presented trophies and shall be honoured virtually at the upcoming Digital Media India 2021 Conference on 2-4 March, next year.

(We got this information in a press release).