Excellence in Video Storytelling, Social
ABOUT THE WORK: The three stories reflect how reels are used for daily breaking spot news, online social trends, and evergreen features. In the past nine months, these reels have contributed to an additional 100,000 followers on IG, as well as increasing opportunities for our social media audience to find their way back to the SCMP homepage.
Within the SCMP newsroom itself, the use of vertical video was unprecedented. Other newsrooms were already using vertical video to promote news for years. And on the ground, the use of hosted vertical videos seemed to reflect at least a small change in the public image of the SCMP. Since the acquisition of the company by Alibaba in 2015, and certainly in the years after the 2019 protests, many have questioned whether politics has changed the way the newsroom operates. These doubts, however subtle, can yield significant consequences in terms of engagement and subscriptions. At the same time, there has been even more scrutiny on geopolitical news as well as the ongoing relationship between China and the US. These reels strived to widen the scope of coverage, and to prove that there are young journalists working in this newsroom to provide relevant and timely news far from living behind a paywall and more as a public service. But most importantly, these reels were made to keep the younger audience engaged with current affairs.
Jayson Albano is a supervising producer for the South China Morning Post’s video team, which covers news in Hong Kong, mainland China and the wider APAC region. Jayson led the production of vertical content for the SCMP’s social media channels, hosting and producing packages to deliver need-to-know information to a younger and wider online audience. He also frequently travels on assignment to produce longer features. His film Rainbow’s End, which follows Manila-based elderly drag queen troupe Golden Gays, was published through the SCMP in 2024, winning Gold at the 2025 W3 Awards. In 2019, he co-directed, edited and produced the short documentary Addicted Innocence, a film about drug-addicted street kids in New Delhi and the lack of funding to aid their rehabilitation. It won Best Short at the Chicago South Asian Film Festival. Prior to joining the SCMP, Jayson spent five years working in broadcast and digital journalism at Reuters.
Honorable Mention: Katrina Pham, series, “Immigration Policies: Explained” (1/2/3), Borderless Magazine
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