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 12/15/2022

"If there’s a fellowship that is supported by your organization and has financial support, it is also a preparation for the next mile of my career, so why don’t I join? " In response to a question about why she joined the HKBU Professional Journalism Fellowship, the news editor for the Hong Kong News of the South China Morning Post, Denise Tsang, gave a very direct answer with a rhetorical question.

With numerous journalism awards, Tsang is a senior journalist who has spent more than 20 years in the local media industry and specialises in macro-economic and political-economic news in Hong Kong. Being a former part-time university lecturer, she returned to the university campus in September this year as a Professional Journalism Fellow, reliving her student days of "tasting fish eggs and drinking Vitasoy milk after school", and taking a "long vacation" for more than three months.

Free to select courses including Western Music

Having worked as a journalist for an English newspaper since she first graduated from university, Tsang has never lost her passion for journalism over the years, and she even "becomes more and more excited about it". Hence, it is unexpecting that her dream from childhood was to become a pianist.

After Tsang started earning her income, she continued to take piano lessons until her workload as a journalist became too heavy and she had no choice but to give up. Her childhood dream of studying classical music had once been denied by her strict mother, and this time she did not hesitate in her choice of courses and took the "Western Music" course offered by the HKBU Academy of Music.

It is almost a tradition for Tsang to cover the Hong Kong Film Awards every year. "I would not watch all the nominated films every year, and I didn’t know the reasons why some of them became winners," She admitted. As for the finalists, Tsang has only "heard of them but not studied their background".

This year, the Hong Kong sci-fi blockbuster "Warriors of Future " has grossed in excess of HK$80 million at the box office, and there have been several low-budget Hong Kong productions that have made a big splash. Therefore, Tsang wondered whether the sudden rebound in Hong Kong films represents an "industry renaissance" for Hong Kong cinema.

One of Tsang's original intentions for returning to school this time is to meet and get to know young people. She explained that in recent years, the government has introduced many youth policies and enterprises have set up youth training programs. Since 2014, she has dealt with plenty of news about young people participating in social movements. "I want to get close to them and find out their thoughts: what do they think about our society now? Do they have any particular ideas?"

She took "Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship", a general education course in the School of Business with students from different majors. Each class lasts for three hours, and during one hour of the class, Tsang and five computer science students sit together and "discuss their projects". When they encountered dead air, Tsang became the journalist again and asked them a few questions. The other students were able to come up with a solution quickly after thinking and discussing the questions, and they became familiar with each other as well.

In her opinion, these young people are "very straightforward, effective and playful ", but they may be a bit too focused on getting good grades. "It would be more helpful for them to innovate if they could broaden their horizons a little more," she noted.

Enjoy "electronic detox" with silent mode turned on for work-related chat groups

The HKBU Professional Journalism Fellowship is the first of its kind in Hong Kong to allow working journalists to take a break from their work and become full-time students while receiving a sum of money equivalent to their salaries so that their livelihoods would not be affected. In a place like Hong Kong, where efficiency always comes first, it seems unimaginable that a company would keep a job for an employee who has stopped working for a few months.

Tsang claimed to be very lucky that she did not encounter much resistance from her company, but was encouraged by her supervisor to apply for the programme. "It's difficult from a management perspective," she admitted. "The company needs manpower to handle the day-to-day work, and it must be challenging to be without even one person."

However, she emphasized that it is an investment in the company's future and manpower, as well as a manifestation of its values. Tsang sees "letting people go" to join the programme as a trade-off for news organizations, but she is convinced that more is to be gained than lost.

Aim for development of data journalism when returning to newsroom

As for the next step, she plans to apply what she has learned during her study at HKBU into practice to promote the development of data journalism in the South China Morning Post when she returns to her original position. Furthermore, she will propose to the management to invite lecturers from HKBU to conduct data journalism workshops on a regular basis. "This is a triple-win situation for HKBU, the fellows and the news organizations," she said.

During the interview, Tsang laughed frequently and her mask did not hinder her infectiously vivid expression, which conveyed a positive and impressive energy. She seemed to share a similarly optimistic attitude when it came to her views on the local journalism industry. "The free flow of information is a characteristic of Hong Kong," she pointed out. “Of course, there are challenges in the external environment, but that doesn't mean there is nothing to be done, rather there is more to be done. When the darkness gets darker, does the light have to be extinguished? But the darker the darkness, the more light there is. If you are a journalist with a passion and a calling to the profession, then give it a go!"

Tsang's answer reminds us of the words of Lu Xun, who wrote to young people:" If you have one degree of heat, then give out one beam of light. Like a firefly, you can shine a little in the darkness. Don't wait for the torch." Let’s hope that journalists and the journalism industry in Hong Kong can become a light that will not go out.