The Chinese University of Hong Kong was the big winner in the 2019 Campus Newspaper Awards, hosted by China Daily Hong Kong Edition on Sunday.

The contest is the only annual campus journalism competition with entrants from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. This year is the eighth edition and saw a record 1,000-plus submissions from 50 universities.

CUHK scooped up 21 of the 84 prizes in the 26 total categories in the Chinese- and English-language competitions.

With the young journalists' work evaluated by a panel of over 70 judges, including academics, veteran journalists, political leaders and business elites, the students received plaudits for their passion and high-quality work.

Hong Kong Baptist University garnered the second-most number of awards, winning 13.

The Hong Kong Shue Yan University took the Winner Awards of Best in News reporting, Best in News Writing, Best in Feature Writing and Best in Business News Reporting in the Chinese-language categories.

In the English-language categories, The Young Reporter of HKBU grabbed the golden prize of Best in Business New Reporting, with its story about the trend of shared apartments amid skyrocketing rents.

Adapting to change

Zhou Li, editorial board member of China Daily Group, publisher and editor-in-chief of China Daily Asia Pacific, said the aim of the event is to advocate for students' making use of what they have learned and to give back to society.

Noting the world now is facing profound changes unseen in a century, Zhou said that a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is on the rise, and the media industry is also affected by the new technologies of cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence.

He said he believes, under this climate of change, journalists need to make efforts to improve their professional abilities. Citing President Xi Jinping's remarks, he explained these abilities include in-depth understanding of the nation's current situation, having agility to respond to current events, exercising independent thinking, and providing accurate and innovative expressiveness.

Zhou made the remarks at the award presentation ceremony in Shenzhen, attended by about 150 professors, journalists and students. Zhou Mo, senior reporter at China Daily, shared her thoughts and experiences with the student journalists. The group also made a visit to the Qianhai Bay Free Trade Port Zone in the city before the ceremony and will have a tour of Huawei Technologies' headquarters on Monday.

Learning from peers

HKBU Associate Vice-President C.K. Yeung said he is glad to find that students' ability to select subjects is improving every year, and he is also pleased to see the improvement of their writing skills. "These award-winning works reflect their sensitivity to current affairs and expression prowess, presenting interesting angles even from the mundane," he said.

Compared with other competition, the contest gathered young journalists' works from different places in the region and established a platform for them to understand and learn from each other's perspectives, he added.

He suggested that the competition further enlarge its scope to universities to include a wider range of places, including Southeast Asia and Western countries.

A winner of an award in Best in News Reporting, Lo Chi-leng, a student at the University of Macau, said she has learned a lot during the interview and writing process. "The competition provides us an opportunity to see the student works of other universities in different places, and we learned a lot from them."

Zhao Jiaqi, a student at Renmin University of China, said receiving an award means professional recognition of the students' work in data journalism and is a great encouragement for him to pursue this goal further.

An infographic about disputes between doctors and patients brought his team the golden prize of Best in Web Page Design in the Chinese category. He said they spent about a month conducting an in-depth investigation and analyses into the subject.

grace@chinadailyhk.com

Prizewinners of the 2019 Campus Newspaper Awards, hosted by China Daily Hong Kong Edition, take a group photo and photos with their awarded works of journalism on Sunday in Shenzhen. Edmond Tang / China Daily

(HK Edition 12/02/2019 page4)