Having tired of Malaysian style journalism,
the Kuok family turns to Singapore
After a
two-year dalliance with executives from the Kuala Lumpur-based Star
English-language daily, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, one of the
region’s most influential English-language dailies, opens its revolving doors
to two senior Singapore Press Holdings executives in June.
The
general impression at the South China Morning Post is that the former Star
executives underwhelmed expectations although in the signature Malaysian way,
they did not rock the boat or generate ill-will.
Former
Singapore Press Holdings editor-in-chief Cheong Yip Seng, who appeared quietly
at the SCMP in January saying he was only there for three months, has now taken
up a 12-month contract to advise and guide the paper’s recently-appointed
mainland-born editor Wang Xiang Wei. Robin Hu, senior vice-president at
Singapore Press Holdings, who was responsible for its Chinese Newspaper
Division, is to become managing director and CEO.
Hu
served for eight years with the Singapore newspaper group, overseeing the
introduction of free Chinese and bilingual newspapers and entertainment sites.
Hu also supervised the establishment of about 70 news kiosks for direct retail
sales and upgraded the subscription sales system.He was also deputy chairman of
SPH Magazines which also has a portfolio of magazines in Hong Kong.
The
global impact of the generational shift to netizens has not spared the Straits
Times, even for the protected dominant market position it enjoys in Singapore.
The massive Press Holdings sales efforts to stem the annual circulation
declines have achieved “a 0.6 percent improvement in the rate of annual
decline” according to an SPH executive familiar with the operation.
The
South China Morning Post is a lean structure that is over-managed and under-led
within the territory’s cutthroat, entrepreneur-driven media environment.
Singapore Press Holdings is top-heavy and bureaucratic, cushioned by virtual
monopoly profits within a press cordon-sanitaire. How much of the Singapore
press editorial and commercial experience can be usefully translated to Hong
Kong will remain questionable, as it was for the trio from The Star.
In
theory, given the regular infusion of administrative and security branch
apparatchiks into Singapore Press Holdings, both Cheong Yip Seng and Robin Hu
should be able to call on considerable manpower resources and backup to
consolidate the Post’s press, magazine and retail assets. If that could lead to
giving Singapore Press Holdings enough comfort to consider an acquisition, it
could allow sugar baron Robert Kuok an exit after years of frustration.
Kuok
has long hawked his shareholding but has been stymied by its poor share
performance. He paid Rupert Murdoch HK$8 a share in 1998 and hopes to recoup a
respectable exit value. The shares, however, have ranged between HK$1.30 and
HK$2.00 over the past 52 weeks. On Apr. 13, they stood at HK$1.49. Potential
buyers balk at his asking price and investors can’t see any upside without
mainland China access.
China entry a mirage?
Access
to China’s newspaper market has been a Kuok dream and an investor expectation
for the last 15 years. Given the heightened sensitivities of the Chinese
Communist Party to the leadership infighting for the next generation line-up in
November this year, however, and the high-profile, still unraveling case of
Chongqing boss Bo Xilai, plus the increasing challenges to party officials at
the village level for selling peasant land to property developers without
authorization, it is unlikely that the mainland would open its newspaper market
to the Hong Kong press.
Ching
Cheong, the Straits Times’ China bureau chief, was arrested and imprisoned by
mainland authorities in April 2005, falsely accused of passing ‘state secrets’
to Taiwan and parlaying information for money to support a mistress in China.
He was a former journalist with the communist party paper Wen Wei Po in Hong
Kong who resigned along with 40 others after the Tienanmen massacre of 4 June
1989.
Ching
was released after more than 1,000 days in prison on Feb 2008 by what is widely
believed to be intervention by then newly promoted central party secretary Xi
Jinping. Xi Jinping, now vice-president, is expected to be confirmed China’s
next leader later this year.
The
recent high-speed popping of skeletons from the cupboards of both
party-approved chief executive candidates by the local press, with the South
China Morning Post well on top of the story, has shaken the Beijing idea of
stage-managing Hong Kong’s political processes. The promised universal voting
franchise for the next chief executive in the 2017 election would prove equally
unpredictable given Hong Kong’s vigorous journalism. China is very
uncomfortable with the Hong Kong press.
Besides,
there would be considerable protective resistance from China’s domestic
newspapers, which went through forced industry consolidation when the
government decreed a phased end to subsidies and merged titles into larger
groups. They have discovered the joys of commercial success in a controlled
market environment and have no reason to accept Hong Kong newspapers, which play
by different rules.
New editor to share his vision for SCMP
The
Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong is hosting a lunch talk on Apr. 17,
titled “Navigating Change: Steering the SCMP to a brighter future” at which
Wang Xiang Wei is to ‘share insights on setting the right course for the
newspaper’.
Few of
Wang’s subordinates in the editorial department have a clue what the new
editor’s agenda is. Like newspaper tea-leaf readers in China, they are also
reading between the lines of the paper’s daily editorials and wondering how
long its columnists would be allowed their space and voice. They look forward
to his lunch talk at the FCC.
At a
newspaper conference in Bali which ended 12 April, Press Holdings delegates
were abuzz with excitement that their experience serving the People’s Action
Party and strongman Lee Kuan Yew is finally being recognized by a South China
Morning Post desperate to please Beijing. Why that would be necessary when the
paper has a Chinese Peoples’ Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC) member as
editor-in-chief seems to have escaped both the Singaporeans and the SCMP board.
To his
credit, Wang Xiang Wei’s weekly Beijing Briefing column continues to be
insightful, well informed and bold without the cringing-poodle style many expected.
The
paper’s recent NPC coverage was respectable and it continues to track the Bo
Xilai affair and the mystery of his lawyer-wife, even as mainland cyber-chatter
is being locked-down.
Regime change at Straits Times editorial
The
Straits Times editor of nine years, Han Fook Kwang, was replaced by former
deputy editor Warren Fernandez in mid-February. Strangely, Han is not retiring
or exiting for the usual corporate ‘to pursue other opportunities’ line. He is
in fact being shifted sideways to managing editor with a broadened portfolio to
include the English & Malay Newspapers Division plus book publishing.
Can
either Han or Patrick Daniel editor-in-chief of EMND, to whom he will directly
report, read or write Malay? That is just another quirk in the make-believe
world of Singapore Press Holdings. Both Han and Patrick were gifted to the news
operation from the civil service.
Warren
Fernandez had a rapidly rising career over two decades as political
correspondent, news editor, deputy political editor, foreign editor and deputy
editor before leaving the news operation in 2008 to join Shell as global
manager, future energy project and regional manager (Asia Pacific) as
communications strategist. He returns to the group after Singapore’s watershed
2011 general election which saw high-profile opposition gains -- puny in any
other country -- and a restive citizenry of younger voters who do not quite
have the fear the older generation felt about PAP politicians of the Kian Yew
era. The Lion City’s blogosphere is active, opinionated, contentious and
un-enamored of the PAP.
The
Straits Times has felt the cold hand of alternative media and has responded
with a massive online presence for its share of cyberspace, aimed at both
English-speaking youth and their Chinese language counterparts. Yet it has not
quite blunted the dissident chatter and distrust of the mainstream media on
domestic politics.
There
is citizen resentment at PAP parliamentary reports being routinely front-paged
while grudging opposition reports are buried inside. The new cohort of
opposition voices match the academic and professional credentials of the PAP
members of parliament with the difference that they are blooded on the streets
as political figures in a highly one-sided contest with the cards stacked
against them.
They
are articulate and do their homework well for parliamentary debate. That has
spooked younger-generation PAP members unused to robust parliamentary
cut-and-thrust. By comparison, many new ministers look tongue-tied and wooden
in parliament. That does not bode well for the next general election and
beyond.
It
calls for a fresh approach to journalism at the Straits Times. Being a
too-obvious government mouthpiece is not playing well to the educated and well-traveled
next generation of voters.
Perhaps
the powers are convinced that Warren Fernandez can regain lost ground and
credibility for the paper and its multimedia channels. The shifts in personnel
following the editorial leadership changes are unsettling for the Straits Times
journalists who, by and large, just want to get on with their lives, hacking
without fuss.
Asia
Sentinel
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