The South China Morning Post and Sunday Morning Post bagged six prestigious design awards at the ninth annual Asia Media Awards in Macau, reaffirming their place among the region's best-designed newspapers.
The South China Morning Post picked up two gold awards, for magazine infographics and sports photography. The top awards recognised the use of information graphics to illustrate the mainland's economic rise in the six decades since the founding of the People's Republic of China, and photographer K.Y. Cheng's action-packed snapshot of the Hong Kong Sevens Cup quarter-final clash between Fiji and England.
The coverage of the People's Republic of China's 60th anniversary also won a silver award, while another went to Edward Wong for news photography.
There were also two bronze awards; one for magazine cover design went to the Sunday Morning Post for a cover highlighting potentially fatal flaws in the Airbus A330 aircraft, and one for feature photography went to Sam Tsang for a picture of a cage home dweller in Sham Shui Po. The picture was also recognised at the Hong Kong News Awards, the Human Rights Press Awards and Focus at the Frontline.
South China Morning Post editor-in-chief Reginald Chua welcomed the recognition, which brings the number of honours and awards to 58 so far this year. 'We're very pleased to win this recognition of the excellent journalism that we do,' Chua said. 'Visual journalism, in the form of photography and information graphics, plays an increasingly important role in communicating ideas and news to people.'
The awards were presented at a dinner in Macau early this month as part of this year's Publish Asia industry conference, both hosted by Ifra Asia, the regional arm of Ifra, the world's leading organisation for newspaper and media publishing. The competition is open to newspapers and magazines in the Asia-Pacific, South Asia and the Middle East.