The Wire's Series on Indian Fisherwomen Wins Two SOPA Awards
New Delhi: The Wire 's five-part multimedia series ' Breaking the Nets: An Oral History of India's Fisherwomen ' has won two awards given by the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) in Hong Kong on June 26.
The series – reported by Shamsheer Yousaf, Monica Jha and Sriram Vittalamurthy – won the top regional/local award in the Excellence in Reporting on Women's Issues category.
Judges noted that the stories "from small communities in remote parts of India are individually notable for explaining the challenge of survival and fight for resources faced by women." They also said, "As a collective, they offer a fascinating insight into the knock-on effects of India's patriarchal society and how women have found a variety of different ways to contend with it. Presented with beautiful film work and clear storytelling in a creative array of different forms."
The series also won the top regional/local prize in the Excellence in Journalistic Innovation category.
The judges commented on the "fantastic use of high quality video and overdubbed audio to give a real sense of place." They added that it was "Truly absorbing. Elegant design and typography. Made with mobile viewing in mind. The multimedia experience goes beyond what traditional media can achieve to capture the women's individual stories."
The stories merge oral histories and immersive multimedia reportage to tell stories of resilience across six Indian regions, including the Sundarban, Gulf of Mannar, Odisha, Puducherry, Mumbai, and Bihar.
The series is a record of the everyday lives of fisherwomen and also underscores their collective efforts to assert rights, access public spaces and challenge patriarchal and caste hierarchies. It also calls attention to how government policies have failed to formally acknowledge their labour in the fishing economy.
A day ago, the series won the award in the Innovative Storytelling category at the 2025 One World Media Awards.
It has already won the 2024 K.P. Narayana Kumar Memorial Award for Social Impact Journalism by the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ) and the Excellence in Online/Digital Journalism, Immersive Storytelling award by the Asian American Journalists Association.
The series has also won the New Media Writing Prize 2024 FIPP Journalism Award. It will be archived by the British Library as one of the works that have been shortlisted.
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