The newspaper and its journalists have won several awards for its news articles or other works based on their experiences while on assignment.

It has won several awards from the Association of Nikkei and Japanese Abroad, including two grand prizes in 2004 and 2007,[1] while a journalist for the newspaper, Takehide Mizutani, won the Takeshi Kaikō Prize [ja] in 2011 for his book The Men Who Abandoned Japan (日本を捨てた男たち), inspired by the homeless Japanese he met in the Philippines as a journalist.

[2] The newspaper also has a history of community outreach, particularly to non-Japanese-speaking Filipinos, through the Daily Manila Shimbun Culture Center.

It began organizing an annual cooking festival in 1998,[3] as well as a Filipino-language essay writing contest in 2002.

[8] The Manila Shimbun also refers to an unrelated World War II-era newspaper published by the Manila Shimbunsha (マニラ新聞社), a corporation that held a monopoly on all wartime print information dissemination for propaganda purposes, including control over pre-war outlets that were allowed to remain open.