The Financial Times’ Moscow correspondent Max Seddon (@maxseddon) has won the FT’s sixth annual Jones-Mauthner Memorial Prize, receiving a £5000 award.
The prize recognises and celebrates the tradition of journalistic excellence exemplified by the the FT’s late foreign specialists JDF Jones and Robert Mauthner.
FT editor Lionel Barber said Seddon’s winning story was “vintage revelatory journalism”. He said Seddon’s work, pursued over several months, “uncovered the story behind the rise of Otkritie, a little-known entity that has become one of Russia’s most powerful banks in spite of western sanctions.” Seddon’s entry also included a comical account of a football World Cup of non-recognised countries, and a Lunch with the FT with a Russia Today anchor.
Leslie Hook (@lesliehook), the FT’s San Francisco correspondent, was named runner-up, receiving a £2000 prize, for her reporting and analysis of the rise and stumble of Uber. Hook covered one of the big corporate stories of the year by drawing on her time as a correspondent in China, examining Uber’s billion-dollar battle for market share with its local rival.
The 2017 judges were FT editor Lionel Barber; former FT foreign correspondent and energy editor David Buchan; business editor Sarah Gordon; Tony Robinson, FT’s former East Europe editor and foreign correspondent; and FT Weekend editor Alec Russell.
JDF Jones was the FT’s first Weekend editor and the driving force behind the expansion of the FT’s foreign network in the 1970s. Robert (Bob) Mauthner was a distinguished Paris correspondent, diplomatic editor and European analyst.
Last year’s winners were Katrina Manson (@KatrinaManson) and David Crow (@bydavidcrow).
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