The South China Morning Post, together with its Sunday edition, the Sunday Morning Post,
is an Hong Kong English-language newspaper with a circulation of 104,000, published by
the SCMP Group.
In 2009, Reginald Chua, deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and former editor
of The Wall Street Journal's Asia edition, was appointed editor-in-chief of the paper,
replacing CK Lau.
Chua was joined by David Lague, formerly of the International Herald Tribune and The Wall
Street Journal, as managing editor.
Chua has since stepped down, replaced by former Deputy Editor Cliff Buddle.
History Broadsheet
South China Morning Post Ltd was founded by Tse Tsan-tai and Alfred Cunningham in 1903.
The first edition of the paper was published on 6 November 1903.
From its founding, during the Qing dynasty until 1913, one year after the establishment
of the Republic of China, it was known, in Chinese, as 《南清早報》.
In 1913, its Chinese name was changed to 《南華早報》, and has remained as such since then.
The Chinese name of Sunday Morning Post is 《星期日南華早報》.
In November 1971, it was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
It was privatised by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in 1987, and relisted in 1990.
Malaysian tycoon Robert Kuok's Kerry Media bought the controlling interest from News
Corp in October 1993.
His son, Kuok Khoon Ean, took over as chairman at the end of 1997.
Kuok Khoon Ean's sister, Kuok Hui Kwong, was named chief executive officer on 1 Jan 2009.
Circulation and profitability The paper's circulation has remained relatively
constant at 104,000 copies since 2000.
The average audited circulation for the first half of 2007 stood at 106,054, while its Sunday
edition, the Sunday Morning Post, has a readership of 80,865.
In 2012, the readership of the SCMP and the Sunday Morning Post was estimated at 396,000.
Its readership outside Hong Kong remains at some 6,825 copies for the same period, again,
relatively unchanged.
It also had the position as the most profitable newspaper in the world on a per reader basis,
profit declined since peaking in 1997 at HK$805 million, yet its growth potential is viewed
as being largely dependent on its ability to penetrate the wider Chinese market.
The Group reported net profit of HK$338 million for the year 2006, the operating profit of
HK$419m was attributable mainly to the newspaper operation.
The selling price of the paper is HK$8 each from Monday to Saturday, and HK$10 for the
Sunday Morning Post.
A discounted student subscription is also available.
It was increased 14.5% and 25% respectively in August 2011.
As of 26 August 2010, SCMP Group posted a profit of $52.3 million in the first half
of 2010.
Format The printed version of the Post is in a broadsheet
format, in sections: Main, City, Sport, Business, Classifieds, Property, Racing, Technology,
Education, Style magazine; the Sunday edition contains Main, a Review section, a Post Magazine,
Racing, "At Your Service", a services directory, and "Young Post", targeted at younger readers.
On 26 March 2007, the Post was given a facelift, with new presentation and fonts.
Another redesign in 2011 changed the typefaces to Farnham and Amplitude for headlines, Utopia
for text, and Freight for headers.
Online version Scmp.com is a subscription-only service, which
also allows the retrieval of archive articles dating back from 1993.
It was launched online in December 1996.
On 30 May 2007, scmp.com relaunched with a new look, features, and multimedia content.
Headlines and the introduction to stories are now free to view, while the full articles
are available to subscribers.
Archive photos and articles are available for purchase.
On 16 July 2007, scmp.com launched its first-ever viral video marketing campaign targeting a
global audience and highlighting the new multimedia features of the website.
At present, the SCMP also provide free subscription to "The South China Morning Post iPad edition"
for the Apple iPad.
Alleged pro-Beijing bias and censorship The Kuok family is known to be pro-Beijing,
and questions have been raised over the paper's editorial independence.
There have been concerns, denied by Kuok, over the forced departures, in rapid succession,
of several staff and contributors who were considered critical of China or its supporters
in Hong Kong.
These included, in the mid-1990s, their popular cartoonist Larry Feign, humour columnist Nury
Vittachi, and numerous China-desk staff, namely 2000–01 editorial pages editor Danny Gittings,
Beijing correspondent Jasper Becker, and China pages editor Willy Lam, who departed after
his reporting had been publicly criticised by Robert Kuok.
Cartoonist Feign was abruptly dismissed not long after Kuok's purchase of the newspaper,
after running several cartoons about the culling of human body parts from Chinese prisoners.
His firing was defended as "cost cutting", but was widely viewed as political self-censorship
during the jittery final years before Hong Kong's handover to the PRC.
Editorial page editor Gittings complained that in January 2001 he was told to take a
"realistic" view of editorial independence and ordered not to run extracts of the Tiananmen
Papers but was allowed to only after protesting "strenuously".
The editor, however, believed that there had already been sufficient coverage.
At the launch of a joint report published by the Hong Kong Journalists' Association
and Article 19 in July 2001, the chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists' Association
said: "More and more newspapers self-censor themselves because they are controlled by
either a businessman with close ties to Beijing, or part of a large enterprise, which has financial
interests over the border."
Mark Clifford, former editor-in-chief of The Standard from 2004–06, was hired as editor-in-chief
of 'The Post' in February 2006.
He presided over the controversial dismissal of several journalists over an internal prank,
and himself resigned with effect 1 April 2007.
Editor-in-Chief Wang Xiangwei was criticised for his decision to reduce paper's coverage
of the death of Li Wangyang on 7 June 2012.
Wang reportedly reversed the decision to run a full story, and instead published a two-paragraph
report inside the paper; other news media reported it prominently.
A senior staff member who sought to understand the decision circulated the resulting email
exchanges, that indicate he received a stern rebuff from Wang.
Self-censorship concerns were raised in the Chinese-language press of the territory because
Wang is Chinese-born, and is a member of the Jilin Provincial Committee of the Chinese
People's Political Consultative Conference; the paper has since stepped up coverage of
the death and aftermath as major news stories.
Wang made a statement on 21 June, in which he said he understood the "huge responsibility
to deliver news... [and]... the journalistic heritage we have inherited".
and said that his decision not to pursue extensive coverage as the story broke was pending "more
facts and details surrounding the circumstances of this case".
Reporter Paul Mooney, whose contract with the paper was not renewed in May 2012, said
that the Li Wangyang story was not an isolated incident: "[Wang Xiangwei has] long had a
reputation as being a censor of the news...
Talk to anyone on the China reporting team at the South China Morning Post and they’ll
tell you a story about how Wang has cut their stories, or asked them to do an uninteresting
story that was favorable to China."
Despite the pro-Beijing sentiments of the owners, the Morning Post does report on commemorations
of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, and has run editorials criticizing the one-child policy.
Notable staff Gary Botting, writer at the SCMP in the 1960s,
now an extradition lawyer in Canada Jonathan Fenby, editor from 1995 to 1999
Stephen Leather, British thriller novel writer Ma Jun, Chinese environmentalist, reporter
for the SCMP from 1993 to 2000 See also
Media of Hong Kong References
External links Official website
SCMP Tablet Edition SCMP Mobile Edition
SCMP TV South China Morning Post Chinese
Young Post Education Post