ANNOUNCEMENT/EVENT: College of Communication Names Jeremy Page of The Wall Street Journal the 2013 Hugo Shong Journalist of the Year

Award Ceremony

Friday April 26
Trustees Ballroom
One Silber way, 9th Floor
Boston University

To RSVP for luncheon attendance, please contact Ms. Lisa Cohen, Office the Dean, College of Communication:  lisann@bu.edu

Penning a series of exclusive reports at the heart of China’s biggest political story in decades, The Wall Street Journal‘s Jeremy Page broke open an investigation into the death of British businessman Neil Heywood, which led to the fall of one of China’s top Communist Party leaders, Bo Xilai.

Page, who has been covering China intermittently since 1997, joined The Wall Street Journal in 2010. Since then he has covered foreign relations, the military, and Chinese domestic politics—most notably the Bo Xilai scandal and China’s leadership transition in 2012.

“The awards’ committee agreed that Mr. Page’s coverage of the Bo Xilai affair demonstrated the highest of journalistic standards,” said Tom Fiedler, dean of COM. “His enterprise, his craftsmanship and – perhaps most important – his courage to go forward against pressures from both the Chinese and the British governments yielded a profoundly important series, expertly told.”

“This is a great honor for the whole WSJ team in China,” Page said. “The Bo Xilai saga gave us unprecedented scope to explore the inner workings of the Communist Party elite. I’m fortunate to have done so with some exceptionally talented colleagues at one of the few newspapers still committed to investigative reporting. I’m extremely grateful to Hugo Shong, Boston University’s Department of Journalism, and the award selection committee for recognizing our work.”

“It is exceedingly rare for the reporting of a foreign news organization to penetrate the secretive world of China’s leaders,” said Gerard Baker, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. “Jeremy Page did that and more in 2012 – lifting the veil on the murder of a British citizen that led to the downfall of a leading Chinese Communist party official with a series of exclusive reports that exposed a culture of wealth, corruption, and lawlessness among China’s ruling elite.”

In 2011, Page was part of a team of WSJ reporters to receive The Malcolm Forbes Award for their reporting on how the Communist Party of China’s leadership has changed rules facing foreign multinationals investing in the country.

Prior to joining The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Page was a correspondent for The Times of London, based in Russia and India. He has also worked for Reuters in London, Singapore, and Beijing. Born in London, he graduated from Oxford University with a BA in Chinese Studies in 1997.

Shong earned his M.S. degree from Boston University’s College of Communication in 1987. He was a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award in 1998 and the Boston University Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2004. Since 2005, he has been a member of the university’s Board of Trustees.

Jeremy Page will be honored at a luncheon at Boston University on April 26th where he will accept his award.

About the Award

Created by a gift from Hugo Shong (COM ’87), the Hugo Shong Journalist of the Year Award is presented to an individual who has displayed the highest standards of international print journalism in a series of reports on matters of importance specific to Asia. The award includes a cash prize of $10,000.

Previous winners have included David Barboza of The New York Times, Carlotta Gall of The New York Times, and Peter Goodman, formerly of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and currently Executive Business Editor of The Huffington Post.

About Hugo Shong

Hugo Shong has been Founding General Partner of IDG Capital Partners since 1993, also of IDG-Accel China Growth Fund and IDG-Accel Capital Fund since 2005 and 2008 respectively.

In 1993, backed by Patrick J. McGovern, founder and chairman of Boston-headquartered International Data Group (IDG), Mr. Shong formed China’s first technology venture capital firm, IDG Capital Partners which was to invest in a string of China’s most successful internet companies such as Baidu, Tencent (QQ), Sohu, Ctrip, and Soufun.

Partnered with Accel Partners in 2005, IDG Capital Partners now has a total of US$3.8 billion and RMB 3.6 billion (US$600 million) under its management in China.

As an award-winning journalist, Mr. Shong also launched and published over 40 magazines in China and Vietnam, including the Chinese editions of Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, National Geographic, Men’s Health and Robert Report, along with the Vietnamese editions of PC World and CIO magazines.

Mr. Shong completed the Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program in the fall of 1996. He conducted graduate studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy 1987-88 and earned his MS degree from Boston University’s College of Communication in 1987. He studied Journalism at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences from 1984 to 1986 and he received a B.A. degree from Hunan University in 1982.

A recipient of Distinguished Alumni Award at College of Communication, Boston University, in 1998, and Boston University Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2004, he has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Boston University since 2005.

For more information, contact: Kira Jastive, 617-358-1240 or kjastive@bu.edu