China Daily tops awards with four first prizes
China Daily Hong Kong Edition has earned a record-breaking four top prizes in the city’s prestigious Hong Kong News Awards, presented by the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong.
The four top awards were among 11 won by China Daily, including some breakthroughs in new areas.
The result placed China Daily the highest in terms of the number of first-place winners among the 14 newspaper outlets that participated in the competition. China Daily was also ranked third in the overall awards tally.
This year, China Daily for the first time broke new ground in science news reporting, arts and culture news reporting, and page layout (series).
The awards, spanning nine different categories, were chosen among 633 entries from most Chinese and English newspapers in the city.
Veteran photographer Roy Liu scored a hat-trick, winning three photo awards: Best Photograph (Sports) for Crashing out of the Race capturing a chaotic crash in a cycling race; second runner-up Step for a Resting Moment depicting exhausted city employees tak- ing time out; and a merit award for Pokemon Gone showing Pokemon Go enthusiasts camped out at night in a park.
Chitralekha Basu, deputy news editor (arts and culture) at China Daily Hong Kong, clinched the first and second places in Best Arts and Culture News Reporting. The two winning entries were arts series, “Art all around”, a four-part series that captured the social impact of the numerous artworks installed in public spaces in Hong Kong; and “Friends from afar”, a series that profiled noteworthy expats from different countries who have contributed to the economic, cultural and social life in Hong Kong.
Zhou Mo from the business desk won first prize in Best Business Writing (English) for her analysis on the impact caused by the rise of ride-hailing services to a traditional village in Shenzhen known as a “taxi-driver village”. The story was titled “End of the road for the ‘taxi-driver village?’”
She also won second runnerup in the Best Business News Reporting category with a series about incubators, with colleague Chai Hua.
Consistent winners of the News Awards, China Daily graphic designer team Mok Kwok-cheong and Billy Wong secured first place for Best News Page Design (Single Page) for a data journalism project entitled “Shows break out of TV box”, which analyzed the impact of new market participants on the traditional TV industry.
The pair also won a merit award for their handling of China Daily’s data journalism projects.
Editor Robert Ireland won his eighth Newspaper Society award for best headline, with a first runner-up for his headline “Dying to make a living” for a report exposing exploitation in the workplace.
Sylvia Chang from the News Desk won second runner-up in the Best Science News Reporting category with her “climate change adaptation” series.