Not leading anybody
via WikipediaMy earlier entry where I called upon the
South China Morning Post (SCMP) to follow the example of
the Irish Times and skip their financial firewall got a few very interesting comments, anonymously unfortunately, but interesting enough to repeat here.
First, there is the conspiracy theory, suggesting that the central government has urged the owners of the SCMP, the Kuok family, to stay outside the mainland and let the
China Daily take the leading role of the main English language paper. There are a few arguments against this.
First, in
Beijing very few people have been interested in the SCMP, not now, not in the past. What is more likely is that this is a feature of what was before and after China resumed souverinity over Hong Kong in 1997: a kind of tycoon disease. They would try to imagine what the central government would like them to do, while there has been very little proof there would actually be any pressure from Beijing. The central government has bigger problems, I believe.
Second, the China Daily has by now proved that if they had a plan to become a leading English paper in China, that has become a gross failure. There are still the odd newcomers who cannot see through the basic propaganda tricks of the Chinese media but there is no way a government-controlled paper can become a leading medium.
Another commentor:
View from inside is...this paper is going nowhere. No-one up high has the vision to see what the SCMP could be if it opened up online, and they continue to follow the red herring that it's about print distribution on the mainland. That's ridiculous, as a) it'll never happen, and b) it'll be a financial loser even if it does because newspaper readership is relatively miniscule compared to online.
That is a line of thinking not unfamiliar among more traditional media: the decision makers are just not smart enough to get the importance of the online presence. Since the SCMP is still making money, the shift online will only come when it is too late, when the paper is losing money. Most of the print papers have found themselves in that position, some have changed and others are in panic, waiting for the end. I guess the SCMP belongs to the last group.
Update: A telling story for non-believers.
via WikipediaThe China Media Project looks at the way Chinese media and government departments are dealing with the new requirements on "information openness", as it is called in the often murky translation of Chinese jargon.
