Muscat: 'Al Barzah', the weekly newspaper issued by Solus Globus Media Solutions, one of Muscat Media Group’s companies, won two awards recently, at the Society for News Design’s competition’s 37th edition.
The number of entries for the competition touched about 9,000 this year, the number of awards was 906, including five gold medals, 34 silver medals and two certificates of appreciation for the judges of the competition.
Many newspapers from around the world such as 'Washington Post', 'Cleveland Plain Dealer', 'Los Angeles Times', 'National Post', 'Boston Globe', 'New York Times', 'National Geographic' magazine among others international newspapers and magazines had participated in the competition.
From the Sultanate of Oman, the newspapers 'Times of Oman', 'Al Shabiba', 'Hi' and 'Sabat Ayam' – all of which are published by the Muscat Media Group—participated in the competition.
The Al Barzah newspaper, published by Solus Globus Media Solutions, won two awards for its pages of “Qaboos ... the man of peace” and “The Argentine player Diego Maradona.”
Ahmed Essa Al Zedjali, chief executive officer (CEO) of Muscat Media Group, congratulated the 'Al Barzah' team for the awards they won at the Society for News Design’s competition, in the first participation of the newspaper in this competition.
Al Zedjali said: “The win of any newspaper issued by the Group does not come as a surprise to us, because we have a team that is confident in their expertise and potential.”
He added that the Group, represented in the newspapers 'Times of Oman' and 'Al Shabiba' had already won many medals and awards in this global competition.
The Muscat Media Group’s CEO further said: “What pleased us with this result is the win by the emerging weekly newspaper like 'Al Barzah', which has not completed its third year so far, and was able to find a place for itself among the world’s leading newspapers.”
He added that the win of Al Barzah meant that all our newspapers were progressing at a steady pace and moving in the same group approach.
For his part, Saif bin Sulaiman Al-Muzaini, editor-in-chief of 'Al Barzah', said: “We are very pleased to see 'Al Barzah' among the major world newspapers participating in this competition. I expected the page “Qaboos ... the man of peace” to win because of the great effort exerted by the designer Osama Al Jaweesh. In the beginning I was not enthusiastic to participate this year, because I look at our newspaper as being still in a nascent stage, but it was the common desire of the team to participate, and thankfully work in 'Al Barzah' as an integrated work team. In the future, we will see that our participation is greater, as we try to present some issues that distinguish our Omani society from other societies.”