Lightning strikes for Post at WAN-IFRA media awards as storms infographic wins gold

Mong Kok riot reports and design also score highly at prestigious awards

Reading Time:2 minutes

The South China Morning Post scooped three top prizes. Photo: SCMP

Published: 9:00pm, 20 Apr 2017Updated: 6:17pm, 25 May 2017

The South China Morning Post bagged one gold and two silver accolades at the prestigious WAN-IFRA Asia Media Awards this year.

Scoring the top prize in the category for best infographic was “Bolts from the Blue” – a multimedia visualisation of the biggest storms of 2016 created by Post digital artist Marco Hernandez with research input from graphics coordinator Dan Bland.

Meticulously plugging in data from the Hong Kong Observatory, the project featured a map plotting more than 5,100 lightning strikes that occurred within a single hour on July 9 last year, and an interactive graphic showing different types of lightning and how they form.

The newspaper also won a silver award in the breaking news category for its coverage of the Mong Kok riot in February last year, when one of the city’s busiest districts went into virtual lockdown during hours of unrest following a crackdown on illegal street food hawkers.

The SCMP won a silver award in the category for breaking news category for its coverage of the Mong Kok riot. Image: SCMP

Police fired two warning shots and protesters hurled bricks and set fires during the incident.