The selected student reporters will have the opportunity to cover various events and activities at the 2010 World Expo and interview celebrities from all over the world and work with senior reporters.

Both Chinese and foreign students studying in Shanghai, aged under 16, are eligible.

The reporters will get free training in either English or Chinese.

The four-day training program, presented by reporters, editors and news experts, will cover news writing and editing, photography, illustration and page layout. Candidates will find out how a newsroom works.

The first round of training will start next Tuesday and the program will run till November.

Free training will also be offered to elementary- and middle-school teachers to help their students understand newspapers.

Candidates can get more information and apply online at http://www.dfdaily.com/club/.

Application form: http://www.dfdaily.com/application/exponewspaper/
Telephone: 5292-1569, 6247-4264

Shanghai Daily unveiled its monthly "Best Stories" and "Best Pages" awards yesterday.

The best stories of June went to metro reporter Cai Wenjun, business reporter Zhu Shenshen and feature writer Yao Minji.

Cai had an exclusive with her story headlined: "HIV grows rapidly among city men who have sex with men" (June 19, A2), which was widely cited by media and Internet bulletins. Cai attended a scientific education lecture and managed to collect enough material that authorities normally are reluctant to disclose to raise social concerns.

Yao and Zhu developed their own idea into the feature story "Telling pigs from porn: Problems with anti-porn software" (June 23, C4-5), which focused on the green-dam software. It was a very timely and in-depth story with resourceful and interesting sidebars. It was critical, yet well balanced and offered a nice read.

The best page of June went to Sunday's Style column (June 23, B4-5), which showed and commented on celebrities walking the red carpet on the opening night of the 12th Shanghai International Film Festival, written by Zhang Yi and designed by Fu Rong.

The best visual art of the month was shared by our illustrator Zhou Tao and the whole new version of "Live in Shanghai" website (live.shanghaidaily.com).

Zhou created an interesting Scope cover (June 3) combining animation characters together in a classroom of "Olympic math."

Website designers Zhu Moqing, Li Hualiang, Zhang Rui and Shen Xinyi were mainly involved in the "Live in Shanghai" project. 

May's "Best Story" and "Best Page" awards were announced today.

The Best Story award was shared by Business reporters Leo Zhang, Zhang Fengming, and Winny Wang and Metro reporters Cai Wenjun, Liang Yiwen and Lu Feiran.

Reporters from the Business department produced in-depth coverage on the Lujiazui Forum for four consecutive days with abundant and authoritative information, says Zhu Huanian, Shanghai Daily Deputy Editor-in-chief.

A series of Metro stories about a young boy from a poor family coming to Shanghai for treatment of a life-threatening disease with his sister offering a bone marrow transplant was well organized: "Donor girl lost as boy awaits cure" (A2, May 22), "Boy sent home as search continues" (A5, May 23), "Donor girl ran in fear of her mom" (A2, May 26) and "Singapore benefactor meets stem cell transplant siblings" (A4, May 27). The reporters made big efforts to keep the stories vivid and readable, said Shanghai Daily Deputy Editor-in-chief Wu Zheng.

The Best Page went to an Expo Insight page (A4-5, May 1), which detailed, with a lively layout, a one day route around the Expo site on the occasion of the one-year countdown to the event – it was written by Yang Jian and designed by Li Xiaoying.

The Best Translated Story was Li Xinran's "Local men pass test on panty washings" (A2, May 19). It was not an easy job for Li to display the good writing skills in this story with limited resources and time, said J.J Jiang, our managing deputy editor-in-chief.

Feature writer Yao Minji and photographer Wang Rongjiang won a special assignment award for their brilliant performances for the anniversary coverage of the Sichuan Earthquake.

April's "Best Story" and "Best Page" awards were announced yesterday.

The Best Story award was shared by feature writer Yao Minji, biz chief Leo Zhang and metro writer Liang Yiwen.

Yao's series of Hangzhou stories about Kui Yuan Guan (C5, April 3), Su Xiaoxiao (C7, April 9), and the Xiling Seal Engraving Society (C7, April 7) gave her a definite edge. "Min-G's writing combined her personal experiences and made the story vivid and impressive," said Zhang Hong, our deputy editor-in-chief.

Zhang and Liang's story "City plans new equity exchange to help boost high-tech startups" (A2, April 28) was a scoop for the "over the counter stock" market. "Metro reporter Liang has made big efforts to get exclusive business news from a government document and conducted solid interviews," said Shanghai Daily Deputy Editor-in-chief Zhu Huanian.

The Best Page went to a feature page (C1-3, April 1), which showed how people worked in a funeral parlor, written by Lu Feiran, designed by Li Xiaoying; and a biz page (B2, April 17), with a graphic showing a clear explanation of statistics, designed by Chen Jie.

"Thanks to Chen Jie's ideas for the funeral parlor story and a set of touching photos by photographer Wang Rongjiang, the page had a fresh and impressive look", said J.J Jiang, our managing deputy editor-in-chief.

The Best Translated Story was Chen Xingjie's "Parents' march calls attention to lost children" (A2, April 17).

The newsroom yesterday received chocolates in egg-shaped covers with the name of our deputy editor-in-chief Wu Zheng. It is a Chinese tradition family to give out eggs after having a baby. Wu gave birth to a boy on February 12.

But he is not the first Shanghai Daily baby born this year. On February 10, writer Chen Qian had her first baby, also a boy.

Both of the mothers had caesarians. Wu was back home early this week.

Wu's boy weighed 2.7 kilograms and Chen had a 4-kilogram "big" boy.

Wu named her boy Cheng Yuntao (程允韬). “He works hard at sleeping and eating,” Wu told the newsroom with an SMS. The boy looks more like his father, according to our HR Wu Jingling who visited mom and baby.

Chen has yet to name her baby. The boy's father is a policeman also surnamed Chen.

Shanghai Daily congratulates the new moms.

Metro reporter Cai Wenjun happened to hear people talking about a tragedy when she was in line to see her dentist at Shanghai No. 9 People's Hospital on January 14. People were talking about a 20-month-old baby receiving treatment at the hospital because her nanny repeatedly slashed her with a kitchen knife on a cutting board.

Cai thought it was so important that she reacted as quickly as possible.

Weng Lingling, a Metro intern, rushed to the hospital as soon as she got the phone call from Cai. Weng asked people for first-hand information about the case and took pictures. Weng also found out more details from the kid’s parents and doctors.

Cai then wrote the story based on the information Weng collected. Another two Metro reporters, Xu Fang and Dong Hui, also contributed to the article by interviewing the officials and police in charge of the case in Nanhui District.

The scoop was quoted by more than 80 media around the world including The Associated Press. All cited Shanghai Daily and Weng’s picture.

The story was also covered by oriental Morning Post and was picked up by Sina.com, one of China’s biggest portals.

Our foreign expert and polisher Dave Osterhout said: “It was our scoop and all the reporters and editors involved did a good job. It’s unfortunate we couldn’t give all the reporters credit in the paper because of the limited space, so we only used ‘staff reporters.’ ”

Osterhout also mentioned there were two other exclusive stories from the business department last week and he thinks Shanghai Daily will have more scoops in the future.

Special gifts are given to our foreign experts for their hard work throughout the year.

The winners of the singing contest are awarded by Peter Zhang, editor-in-chief of Shanghai Daily, and Miao Guoqin, party secretary of Wenhui-Xinmin Group.

Photographer Zhang Suoqing won a thrilling super prize in the lucky draw.

SHANGHAI Daily staff members, their family and friends, celebrated Christmas with musical performances and lucky draws at the Sheraton Hongqiao Hotel last Saturday.

A Shanghai Daily tradition, the annual Christmas Party is an event for colleagues to meet in a festive atmosphere, to celebrate the year's achievements and to prepare for next year's progress.

The party began with a presentation of the newspaper's achievements during the year after which a buffet was served.

Then everyone welcomed the final rounds of the year's Christmas singing contest.

The seven qualifiers from the preliminary competition on December 12 presented an interesting musical feast of diverse styles. They competed on Saturday with a self-chosen song in the first round to be among the three finalists.

The choice of songs was interesting. For example, Wu Jiayin from the Opinion Department selected a song familiar to colleagues sitting outside her office as it had been frequently heard through the door of her office. She displayed a mastery of the song but one of the three judges failed to pass her.

Only one singer won the three judges' approval to enter the final round. That was Zhu Moqing, aka Laozhu, from the Online Department, who demonstrated his versatile voice and wide repertoire in the theme song from the classic Japanese animation film "Laputa The Sky Castle."

The second round produced two more finalists, Lu Feiran from the Metro Department and Zhu Xiaoyu from the Paste-up Design Department.

The three finalists then competed by singing with distinctive interpretations the same prescribed song, "Tomorrow Will Be Better," a Chinese pop classic. Zhu Moqing was finally announced as the ultimate champion. Lu Feiran and Zhu Xiaoyu won second and third prizes respectively.

"It's a good opportunity for me to introduce some different music to my colleagues," said music enthusiast Zhu after being awarded the champion's medal by Miao Guoqing, party secretary of Wenhui-Xinmin United Press Group.

Shanghai Daily staff were the beneficiaries of many gifts during the luncheon. Cui Zhijun from the Night Desk Department won the first prize, an LCD TV set worth 6,000 yuan, and Li Hualiang, aka Xiaobai, from the Online Department, won second prize, a three-day package tour to Hong Kong.

However there was a super prize yet to be awarded and it was a thrilling moment when it was announced at the end of the party.

Everybody held their breath and award-winning photographer Zhang Suoqing raised his Canon EOS 1D Mark III camera to record the moment.
 
To everybody's surprise, the winner was none other than the photographer himself. Colleagues rejoiced and congratulated Zhang, who put down his camera to pick up the prize, two tickets for a return flight to London.

Shanghai Daily's "Best Story" and "Best Page" Awards for November were announced yesterday.

As nominated reports were all very "strong," it was really a hard decision, according to Shanghai Daily Deputy Editor-in-Chief Wu Zheng.

The Best Story of the Month was shared by two package reports of the Metro and Business sections to encourage their quick response and in-depth reporting on the "Shanghai business school dorm fire" story on November 15 and the "20th International Business Leaders' Advisory Council" package on November 2.

As more departments joined the competition of Best Story of the Month, "the cake is now smaller and smaller," said J.J Jiang, our managing deputy editor-in-chief.

Yang Jian's "Expo worker" was the nominee for the Translation Department. The Metro's "City gas pipe explosion" story and Opinion's "Public intellectuals and vigorous debates are desperately needed" were also given serious consideration for the top prize.

The heated competition and high quality reporting pushed the judges to consider increasing the number of prizes to encourage reporters.

The Best Page of the Month went to the Sunday's City Scene on November 18 as it provided more concrete ways to express the content of the column.

Metro department's Lu Feiran sings with expressiveness.

Chen Jie, Michelle Qiao and Emma Liu, the judges, give professional opinions on singers' performances.

Shanghai Daily staff rejoiced in wonderful music and applause at the preliminary round of this year's Christmas singing contest this afternoon. Twelve candidates competed for seven slots at the final competition, which will be the key part of Shanghai Daily's grand Christmas Party on December 20.

The singers have displayed enormous talents and a variety of vocal styles. Some of them appeared in duets, such as the business department's Jin Jing and Fu Chenghao, who had practiced with great efforts in a Karaoke Bar last night and contributed a fresh and well-expressed overture for the contest.

Some of the singers either failed to provide accompaniment recordings or submitted discs unable to be played. However, some unaccompanied performances were still outstanding, like our new colleague Ding Yining's rendering of Faye Wang's "Eyes On Me," which sounded particularly touching.

The online department's Zhu Moqing, aka Lao Zhu, brought something new again this year. The third movement of Antonio Vivaldi's Bassoon Concerto in E minor, RV 484, was presented in his arrangement which converted the solo bassoon to his solo voice, a tribute to the great vocalist Bobby McFerrin.

Some singers finished the first round with pending results. They were dragged into a small overtime knock-out competition afterwards. Chen Ying from the paste-up department succeeded in the second attempt with a much better performance than his first song.

A list of singers who advanced to the final today: business department's Jin Jing/Fu Chenghao duet, Ding Yining; metro department's Lu Feiran; paste-up design department's Zhu Xiaoyu, Chen Ying; online department's Zhu Moqing; opinion department's Wu Jiayin.