Post lifts five prizes at SOPA Editorial Awards

The South China Morning Post and the Sunday Morning Post lifted five prizes and earned five honourable mentions in this year's Society of Publishers in Asia (Sopa) Editorial Awards.

The Post's coverage on US whistle-blower Edward Snowden by Lana Lam won an excellence award in the best scoop category. The Post also scored an excellence award in the best news reporting category for the series of stories on Snowden that followed.

Harry Harrison won an honourable mention in editorial cartooning for his depiction of the NSA whistle-blower.

Another Post scoop, by the national team, on the criminal investigation into the retired security tsar Zhou Yongkang , won an honourable mention.

The excellence in digital news award went to the Post's multimedia team, including Christy Choi, Silvio Carrillo, Robin Fall, Lau Ka-kuen, May Tse, Sarah Graham and others.

Their multimedia package, 21HK, tells of the water issues facing Hong Kong, from scarcity to cleaning up the chemicals that are flushed daily down the drain.

In the new category of reporting on women's issues, the Post's Guangzhou correspondent, Mimi Lau, won an honourable mention. Lau's article told how mainland activist Ye Haiyan was detained after protesting outside a school where a principal and a government clerk were accused of raping six girls.

The national team's Keith Zhai won an excellence award in feature writing for his news feature on the rise and fall of disgraced former Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai .

Financial services editor George Chen and business editor Nick Edwards won an honourable mention in business reporting for their coverage of Shanghai's free-trade zone.

Senior graphic designer Alberto Lucas Lopez scored an excellence award in information graphics for his illustration entitled Under the Sea, which showed how Hong Kong would look if all of the world's ice were to melt. The Post's back-page photography feature, Minimum thinking, won an honourable mention.

All of the Post's awards were in the category open to English-language newspapers that circulate primarily in one or two countries.

The Post's editor-in-chief, Wang Xiangwei, said: "These awards are testament to the Post's commitment to producing the best journalism. It has always been our priority to deliver excellent coverage of news about the city, the mainland and, indeed, the world. It's a tradition we will continue to build upon in the years ahead."

The awards - established in 1999 - were announced at the society's gala dinner at the Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai last night.