Name of Project: Occupy Central Category: Digital first Sponsoring newspaper: South China Morning Post Address: Young Post, Morning Post Centre, 22

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1 Name of Project: Occupy Central Category: Digital first Sponsoring newspaper: South China Morning Post Address: Young Post, Morning Post Centre, 22 Dai Fat Street, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong, SAR, China Website: yp.scmp.com Project manager: Karly Cox, Deputy Editor, Young Post Contact: // Frequency: Daily paper Circulation as of May 2015: 30,000 for weekday Young Post (school edition with SCMP) and 80,000 for Sunday Young Post (distributed with Sunday Morning Post) Target audience: Hong Kong Secondary Students (age 12-19) Description of project: Giving readers frequent, objective reports on the student protests and civil disobedience movement, Occupy Central, in Hong Kong through digital platforms, supported by our print product.

2 Goal We wanted to give our readers the most accurate and up-to-date information on the Occupy Central protests. We knew the fastest way to do this was using our website and social media platforms, in combination with our print product.

3 Project TIMELINE Beginning with the student protests on September 22, 2014, and throughout the civil disobedience movement in Hong Kong known as Occupy Central, we provided live and frequently updated coverage via the website, print and social media platforms. PROJECT AUDIENCE Our readers are Hong Kong secondary school students from a range of schools: local schools of Chinese-medium instruction where the level of English tends to be weak (although this is not the case across the board) local schools of English-medium instruction where the level of English, and also of general accomplishment, tends to be high (although, again, this is not universal) a small proportion of international schools, where English or another foreign language is the language of instruction.

A little background At Young Post, we don t typically do live coverage of hard news, but when university students announced a class boycott, we knew we had to be there A week-long protest by

4 A little background At Young Post, we don t typically do live coverage of hard news, but when university students announced a class boycott, we knew we had to be there A week-long protest by university students started on September 22, 2014 Students voiced their objection to the mainland government s criteria for the next Chief Executive election in ,000 students participated We sent two reporters, to tweet and to gather material for stories

5 Live coverage

6 A little background On September 26, 2014, secondary school students joined class boycott More than 1,200 students participated in the morning. By 6pm, up to 3,000 had joined.

7 Live coverage

8 Live coverage In the early hours of September 27, 2014, student protesters stormed Civic Square, a formerly public space at government headquarters, that police had fenced off Police used batons and tear gas to try and clear the area

9 Live coverage Protesters used umbrellas to defend themselves against tear gas, and thus the names Umbrella Movement and Umbrella Revolution were born.

10 Live coverage Prompted by the student protests and the heavy-handed reactions of the police, the civil disobedience movement, Occupy Central, brought forward their own protests and took to the streets in support of the students and to demand universal suffrage in Hong Kong

11 A change of strategy Anyone who was available to go to the protest site went to report We used the team Whatsapp group to share reports and photos from the scene

12 A change of strategy We decided to sacrifice web traffic and focus on social media This freed up staff so they could head to the protest sites first thing in the morning, before the crowds arrived

13 A change of strategy And stay late into the night, feeding a constant stream of information and images back to those running our social media

14 Twitter

15 Instagram A picture is worth more than 140 characters, so we also used Instagram a lot, to better show the atmosphere and environment.

16 Junior reporter: Jessie Pang Jessie Pang, a member of our Junior Reporters Club, who is also a first-year student at Baptist University and an active participant in the initial boycott, joined our Whatsapp group to offer valuable insight into the students perspective and on-theground reports.

17 Junior reporter: Jessie Pang

Right people, right places, right time We were there for: The sudden announcement for the start of Occupy Central where police used tear gas against protesters A group of 30 men

18 Right people, right places, right time We were there for: The sudden announcement for the start of Occupy Central where police used tear gas against protesters A group of 30 men trying to take down protest barriers, which was caught on video by one of our reporters and was viewed more than 53,000 times: theater

19 Other coverage of OC Web stories to complement social media

20 Other coverage of OC Integrating multimedia and video to accompany print stories and provide more in-depth coverage, such as the profile of 17-year-old Prince Wong, who slept at the protest sites while going to school every day: yp.scmp.com/video/day-life-studentoccupy-mong-kok

21 Other coverage of OC Blog entries from the team

22 Other coverage of OC Blog entries from our junior reporters about their thoughts and experiences

This showed different aspects of the protests, while also promoting

23 Other coverage of OC Inspired by Humans of New York, we shared four photo galleries: Humans of Occupy Central. This showed different aspects of the protests, while also promoting the new photo gallery option on our revamped site. yp.scmp.com/photo/91142/humans-occupycentral-gallery-1

24 Other coverage of OC Integrated coverage into print product, with articles written by our junior reporters

25 Other coverage of OC

26 Progressing the project After two weeks of intense coverage, we decided to scale back Reporters concentrated on finding and fleshing out stories for print and online We were still there for major events, such as the clearing of the protest sites by police: yp.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/ 92896/hong-kong-police-shut-down-finaloccupy-central-site

The numbers Twitter (@youngposthk) Followers on Sept. 21: 405 Followers on Oct.

27 The numbers Twitter Followers on Sept. 21: 405 Followers on Oct. 31: 1,400 ( 246%) Retweets from Sept. 1 to 21: 32 Retweets from Sept. 22 to Oct. 12: 4,900 ( 15,213%)

The numbers Instagram (@youngposthk) Followers on Sept. 21: 826 Followers on Oct.

28 The numbers Instagram Followers on Sept. 21: 826 Followers on Oct. 31: 1,662 ( 101%) Likes/comments from Sept. 1 to 21: 2,000 Likes/comments from Sept. 22 to Oct. 12: 28,400 ( 1,320%)

29 The numbers Facebook (facebook.com/youngposthk) Avg daily reach from Sept. 1 to 21: 2,373 Avg daily reach from Sept. 22 to Oct. 12: 110,319 ( 4,549%) Avg daily impressions from Sept. 1 to 21: 8,619 Avg daily impressions from Sept. 22 to Oct. 12: 208,438 ( 2,318%)

30 The numbers yp.scmp.com One month before Occupy Central: Total page views: 111,660 Total visits: 42,859 Unique visitors: 32,815 One month after Occupy Central: Total page views: 172,112 ( 54%) Total visits: 70,026 ( 63%) Unique visitors: 52,323 ( 59%)

31 Feedback Global recognition and recommendations to follow us for live, objective coverage

32 Feedback Positive responses from international media

33 Feedback yp.scmp.com blocked on mainland China

34 About SCMP South China Morning Post is the flagship publication of the South China Morning Post Publishers Limited, which engages primarily in newspaper and magazine publishing. It is the leading English language newspaper in Hong Kong with a circulation of over 100,000 reaching affluent and influential readers. As part of South China Morning Post, Young Post is aimed at a younger student audience between 12 and 19 years of age. The majority of secondary school students in Hong Kong subscribe to Young Post. SCMP and Young Post offer their readers the most reliable English information on Greater China in its print and digital forms. The newspapers emphasise credibility, accountability, knowledge, truth and professionalism as the guiding principles.

Name of Project: Press freedom awareness Category: Editorial Sponsoring newspaper: South China Morning Post Address: Young Post, Morning Post Centre,

Name of Project: Press freedom awareness Category: Editorial Sponsoring newspaper: South China Morning Post Address: Young Post, Morning Post Centre, 22 Dai Fat Street, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong,