The 2025 Columbia-Nikkei Journalism Scholarship Awarded to Dimuthu Attanayake
Columbia Journalism School and Nikkei Inc. have named Dimuthu Attanayake as the 2025-26 Nikkei Scholar. The $100,000 scholarship is awarded annually to an exceptional journalism school candidate who is a resident of Asia and plans to specialize in data or business reporting. Nikkei Inc. is the parent company of the Financial Times, the publisher of the Nikkei and Nikkei Asia.
Dimuthu is an award-winning independent journalist, and the first Pulitzer Center grantee from Sri Lanka. In July 2024, she won an award at the 20th Developing Asia Journalism Awards by ADBI, for her investigation on how climate change exacerbates gender-based violence among women farmers – reported with support from the Pulitzer Center. She has also won numerous awards for her outstanding reporting.
At Columbia Journalism School, Dimuthu is pursuing an M.S. Data Journalism degree. Dimuthu shares that she is "simply thrilled to be at the famed Pulitzer Hall, home to some of the industry's most prestigious awards, for the next year." and that she is "beyond grateful" to be at CJS thanks to Nikkei's support.
The Columbia-Nikkei Scholarship was established in 2017 to fund exemplary candidates who wish to specialize in data and business journalism. Students who are residents of Asia with an interest in the M.S. Data Journalism or M.A. Business and Economics concentration will be considered for the Columbia-Nikkei Scholarship.
About Columbia Journalism School
For more than a century, Columbia Journalism School has been preparing journalists in programs that stress academic rigor, ethics, journalistic inquiry and professional practice. Founded with a gift from Joseph Pulitzer, the school opened its doors in 1912 and offers a Master of Science, Master of Arts, a joint Master of Science degree in Computer Science and Journalism and Doctor of Philosophy in Communications. It houses the Columbia Journalism Review, the Brown Institute for Media Innovation and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. The school also administers many of the leading journalism awards, including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, the Maria Moors Cabot Prizes, the John Chancellor Award, the John B. Oakes Award, the J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project, Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award and the Meyer “Mike” Berger Award.
To learn more about Columbia Journalism School, visit: https://journalism.columbia.edu/
About Nikkei
Nikkei Inc. is a world-renowned media brand for Asian news, respected for quality journalism and for being a trusted provider of business news and information. Founded as a market news provider in Japan in 1876, Nikkei has grown into one of the world's largest media corporations, with 37 foreign editorial bureaus and approximately 1,500 journalists worldwide. Nikkei acquired the UK-based Financial Times in 2015. Our combined digital and print circulation totals about 2.5 million, and we are continually deploying new technologies to increase our readership.
Contact
Public Relations Office Nikkei Inc. [email protected]