David Barboza, the Times‘ business reporter based in Shanghai, has won the paper’s internal business award, the Nathaniel Nash Award. The award is named after Mr. Nash, who died in a plane crash in Croatia while on assignment for the Times. With the award, Mr. Barboza gets a check for $1,500!
Here’s Times Executive Editor Bill Keller’s memo to the staff:
I’m pleased to announce that David Barboza, the Shanghai correspondent for Business Day, has won the 10th annual Nathaniel Nash Award for the excellence of his journalism.
The award honors our colleague Nathaniel Nash, who died on assignment in a plane crash in Croatia 12 years ago. It is given to a New York Times correspondent or reporter "who excels in business or economic news, nationally or abroad, just as Nathaniel did." David joins previous winners Dick Stevenson, Steve Lohr, Ed Andrews, Steve Labaton, Alan Cowell, Neela Banerjee, Keith Bradsher, Mark Landler and David Leonhardt.
In his 11 years at The Times, David has done distinguished work as a markets reporter in New York, a business correspondent based in Chicago and now as a correspondent in China since 2004.
David, whose wife Lynn Zhang is Chinese, has captured the complexities of China today by immersing himself in its culture in a way that few foreign correspondents can. David excels at humanizing the economic issues changing China and affecting the rest of the world.
For his reporting from China last year, David recently won an enterprise writing award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for his gripping tale about the rise and fall of China’s top food and drug official, who was executed after being convicted of corruption; he also is a finalist, along with Walt Bogdanich, Jake Hooker and Andrew Lehren, for a Loeb Award for stories about toxic products and corruption in China. A fearless reporter known for his willingness to go wherever necessary to get the story, David was detained by authorities at a toy factory suspected of making tainted products — and wrote about it with insight and good humor after he was released.
In 2006, David won the Hugo Shong Journalist of the Year Award for Reporting on Asia, which is presented by Boston University’s College of Communications. And with several Times colleagues he also won a Loeb award in 2005 for deadline writing for the paper’s coverage of the purchase of I.B.M.’s PC business by the Chinese company Lenovo.
David isn’t just a good journalist, but a wonderful colleague who is liked and respected by Times staffers and competitors, as Nathaniel was. David is unfailingly polite, even on deadline pressure, and always willing to pitch in when things are flying fast and furious. Plus, he gives terrific walking tours of Shanghai!
We will give David his award at a luncheon in New York, where we will be joined by Nathaniel’s widow, Elizabeth, and their children. David will receive an inscribed copy of Meyer Berger’s "Story of The New York Times, 1851-1951" and a check for $1,500.
Bill Keller
