‘Powerful, succinct and risk-taking’: The Post honoured for journalism and design in Hong Kong and top global competition

It was a day of honours for the South China Morning Post. The city’s 116-year-old newspaper of record won six prizes in the Hong Kong News Awards and earned 43 awards, including a coveted gold medal, at the annual competition of the Society for News Design (SND), one of the global news industry’s most prestigious events. At home, the Post was honoured at the annual event of the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong for excellence in news writing, photojournalism and news page design. The top English news writing award went to Rachel Leung Yuk-ming and Michelle Wong Man-ting for the feature “Don’t treat us like trash”. The story focused on the daily lives of two elderly Hong Kong streets cleaners exploited by being forced to work long hours for low wages. Leung, who has been a reporter for just four years, was thankful for the opportunity to tell the story. “It pushes me to continue to be the voice for the voiceless and unveil the truth. I hope this article can shed a light on how poorly treated these street cleaners are,” Leung said. The Post’s technology team won first runner-up for business news writing in English for “How Anthony Tan of Grab seized his chance” by editor Chua Kong Ho and reporter Zen Soo. The story told of how Tan, the co-founder of the Singapore-based company Grab, started his company in a garage in Kuala Lumpur and built it into Southeast Asia’s most valuable startup. Soo said several weeks were spent researching and interviewing the co-founders, as well as employees, investors and experts in several countries. “It required a lot of effort putting together the multi-media package of text, video and graphics but I’m glad it paid off,” she said. Chang Kim-fung, an assistant photo editor, took first runner-up in feature photography for an image of a delivery rider overloaded with takeout lunches on a Wan Chai street. Photographer Dickson Lee, meanwhile, won a merit prize for a shot of Philco Wong Nai-keung, then the MTR’s projects director, as he demonstrated how a piece of steel rebar was screwed into a coupler amid the scandal over the Sha Tin-Central rail link Marco Hernandez and Marcelo Duhalde won the top prize in news page design for their “Forbidden City” series published in August and December. The awards in Hong Kong came as the full results were released from the SND’s 40th annual Best of News Design competition. At the global contest, the Post was recognised as one of the world’s most visually appealing newspapers, winning the sixth highest total of awards alongside publications such as The New York Times and National Geographic. The SND awards, determined by 22 international judges out of 4,831 entries, were for excellence in infographics, illustration and page design for photography, breaking news, sports and business features, as well the combination of print and digital presentations. The Post won a gold medal for its infographic “Safe Skies”, a data visualisation of aviation safety that appeared in print on January 22, 2018. The SND judges described the piece as a “powerful, succinct statement”. The Post also won silver medal for Kaliz Lee's feature design "Home Economics"; she also won two awards of excellence for the same piece in the information graphics and feature design categories. Meanwhile, another feature from the paper, “The China Ship”, was given five awards of excellence. Adolfo Arranz, the Post’s deputy head of graphics and illustration, said the two most highly awarded submissions could not be more different. “The graphic on aviation basically came together in a single day after the concept came to me as a flash of inspiration, while ‘The China Ship’ was three months of hard work, missed lunches and late nights,” Arranz said. “Of course, the greatest honour is winning the gold medal. It is a milestone I could never have achieved without the help of my colleagues who always pitch in, regardless of whose byline goes on the page.” The best of SCMP's visual journalism from 2018 The Post’s graphics team won special recognition from the judges for its spirit of “risk-taking experimentation” – an honour that brought added motivation for Darren Long, the Post’s head of graphics and magazine design. “I am so proud of the team, receiving the Judges Special Recognition award for staff portfolio is immense,” he said. “We try to create an environment where we can experiment and take chances without fear of failure. Having the judges recognise this feel like a major vindication and encourages us to keep pushing crazy ideas other papers may reject as too offbeat.” In February, the Post was honoured at the SND’s Best of Digital Design competition, landing the competition’s fourth largest tally of medals after The New York Times, The Washington Post and Reuters. The SND is an international organisation for “news media professionals and visual communicators” founded in 1979. The society’s annual competition is widely considered the pinnacle of newspaper and magazine design.