Kursiv Newspaper wins prestigious European award
The prominent European Newspaper Award has selected Kursiv, a business weekly published by Kursiv.media in Kazakhstan, as the winner in the Cover and Cover Story Nationwide Newspaper category. The world’s 26th newspaper and online media design competition received over 3,000 applications in 20 categories from 22 countries.
For the contest, Kursiv.media has chosen a newspaper issue featuring a cover story about the criminal boss’s empire from Kyrgyzstan, titled «Criminal Kyrgyzstan: The Rise and Fall of a Notorious Central Asian Kingpin» (Original: Бандитский Кыргызстан: как криминалитет соседней республики попал в кустуризацию). The article is accompanied by infographics and an illustration, depicting a thick, bald man wearing a suit and a crown, gazing at a city surrounded by mountains. This is a reference to Kamchybek Asanbek (Kamchy Kolbayev), a prominent boss of the Kyrgyz mafia. In the fall of 2023, he was killed during a police operation in Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan. His assets, valued at around $1 billion, were seized by the government.
«A golden crown with diamonds was among the confiscated assets, which is why it’s featured in the illustration. Kolbayev also owned 850 real estate properties, 60 luxury cars and 15 expensive horses. We have depicted this data in the infographics. The European Newspaper Award assesses design, not journalistic content, so I provided a brief translation of the article for the judges to help them understand the illustration and infographic solutions,» Tatyana Nikolaeva, editor-in-chief of the Kursiv newspaper, commented.
This article, like every newspaper text, was uploaded to the Kursiv.media website and remained the most popular story among readers for several days. Tatyana Trubacheva, the author of the text and editor-in-chief of the website, shared:
«People are always interested in what’s going on in neighboring states. If something bad happens, it makes us feel that we’re living quite well. If something wonderful happens, we can adopt their positive experience. I suppose readers think that way. As for the awarded story, I see it as an extraordinary case, regardless of the country.»
The European Newspaper Award was founded by the prominent newspaper designer Norbert Küpper in 1999. The 2025 award ceremony will take place in Vienna during the European Publishing Congress.
Other winners in the category include Arab News, Blick, Børsen, Der Standard, de Volkskrant, Gazeta Wyborcza, Kurier, Público, SüddeutscheZeitung and Handelsblatt.
