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Media
The demise of Asiaweek in December 2001
created shock waves in the Hong Kong journalistic community. Two writers
look at the newsweekly's death.
By Peter Cordingly
Strap on your seatbelts, because we're in for an incredibly fun
ride. It's the kind of opportunity that doesn't come down the pike
very often in journalism. I feel lucky to be part of the process
-- and of our team. With such a strong one, I foresee nothing but
success.
Those were the words of new Asiaweek editor Dorinda Elliott
in a message to staff shortly before the magazine was relaunched
in May 2001. The old magazine was being dumped and replaced by a
New Economy publication specialising in information technology and
business. A
little more than six months later, it was gone for good - closed
down by its American owners. What happened? And who was to blame?
In happier times The editorial team at a gathering
in the late 1990s, with former editor Ann Morrison (in brown, with
fair hair, towards the front). Morrison's departure was the signal
for a repositioning of the magazine under successor Dorinda Elliott.
The line pushed by the Asiaweek management was that the
magazine was
finished off by the Nine Eleven terrorist attacks - that a slump
in advertising revenue caused by the shock to the world economic
system had made profitability too distant a prospect. "We were
struck by lightning," was how publisher and managing director
Peter Brack put it to stunned staff on the morning the closure was
announced.
Brack may believe that, but not many former Asiaweek staff
do. While September 11 did make a bad situation worse, the magazine
was almost certainly a goner well before then. Part of Elliott's
style as editor was not to share information, so even now reliable
figures are hard to come by. But conversations with ad sales staff
in the wake of the relaunch were enough for editorial to get a feel
for what was going on: it was clear the new Asiaweek was the wrong
magazine at the wrong
time.
Why? For the simple reason that Asiaweek jumped on the information
technology (IT) bandwagon just as the wheels were coming off. Nasdaq
was in free fall, dotcoms were turning to dust all around Asia and
international magazines that drew their revenue from IT advertising
were showing signs of distress. And yet Brack and Elliott pushed
on with their folly. Perhaps they had no choice. Vast sums (we never
knew how much) had been squeezed out of the owners, AOL Time Warner,
for a redesign, staff hirings and a fancy relaunch, including TV
spots.
More than that, New York had bought the line that IT and business
were the only possible salvation of Asiaweek, which had made
money only a few years in its quarter of a century. To underscore
this point, Brack ceremonially burned a copy of the old-style magazine
in front of a gathering in Macau of ad sales staff.
When news of that grotesque gesture reached editorial, senior journalists
were outraged. Some had devoted their lives to the magazine, often
at considerable cost to their families. It was bad
enough that the old editorial beliefs were being abandoned, but
for the publication they had built up to be torched in public by
its brash new American publisher was a shuddering blow to self-esteem.
For some of the old hands, the pain didn't last long. Salman Wayne
Morrison, Ric Saludo, Tom Polin and Todd Crowell disappeared one
after the other, sacked or dispirited, taking with them decades
of irreplaceable knowledge of Asia and the subtleties of its ways.
Their skills were not needed in the new Asiaweek, which dropped
its mission statement: "To report accurately and fairly the
affairs of Asia in all its spheres of human activity, to see the
world from Asian perspective, to be Asia's voice in the world."
The magazine became American in style, attitude and terminology,
with many stories reported by a flurry of youngsters hired to produce
the "edgy" IT copy Elliott wanted. But their job wasn't
easy. The new Asiaweek was supposed to record how IT was
changing the face of Asian business. There would be heroic profiles
of young techno-entrepreneurs pushing boundaries. But as the dotcom
bodybags built up, the magazine was soon running out of significant
stories to tell.
In what seemed like a desperate attempt to salvage something, the
previously scorned political coverage was brought back. But the
magazine now had the wrong staff and the wrong look. In the space
of a few months, Asiaweek had been reduced from a respected
voice on Asian affairs to a journalistic irrelevance.
Was it Elliott's fault? Not really. She proved to be a talented
journalist with courage, stamina and an astute sense of what makes
a story work - though she was utterly unskilled at managing people
and was generally not liked by her staff. No, in the end Asiaweek
died because, after the merger of AOL and Time Warner, it became
just a tiny dot on the outer rim of the media giant's radar screen.
Indeed, it's fairly certain that the New York bean-counters who
recommended
closure had never even seen a copy of the magazine. But they knew
all about Time. And many people at Asiaweek believe
that is the real story behind their magazine's closure. They suspect
that Asiaweek was sidelined into an IT and business publication
for entirely cynical reasons - to challenge BusinessWeek
and the Far Eastern Economic Review for advertising dollars
while leaving the way open for Time's expansion in Asia.
When the end came, it was a blow, of course. No one likes losing
their job, particularly just ahead of Christmas (another sensitive
touch from AOL Time Warner), but for many journalists it was a blessing.
For them, it was better that Asiaweek had disappeared altogether
than for it to live on in the shell of what it had become. There
were commiserations in the bar that night,
as well as anger at the management. But mainly the mood was of relief
once that a fine magazine had been finally laid to rest.
Peter Cordingley was a senior editor at Asiaweek.
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