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South China Morning Post
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The South China Morning Post, together with its Sunday edition, the Sunday Morning Post, is the dominant English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, with a circulation of 104,000. Published by the SCMP Group, the South China Morning Post has a higher print circulation than its main competitors in Hong Kong, the Asian Wall Street Journal and The Standard.
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South China Morning Post Ltd was founded in 1903. The first edition of the paper published on November 6, 1903. 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 Ltd bought the controlling interest from News Corp in October 1993. His son, Kuok Khoon Ean, took over as chairman at the end of 1997. The family is known to be pro-Beijing, and questions have been raised over its editorial independence[1]: the journal has had 5 Editors-in-Chief in the last 10 years.
The paper has a circulation which has remained relatively constant at 104,000 copies since 2000, but is lower than a decade ago. The average audited circulation for the first half of 2006 stood at 104,415, while its Sunday edition, the Sunday Morning Post has a readership of 80,498. Its readership outside Hong Kong remains at some 6,825 copies for the same period, again, relatively unchanged[2]. It also had the the enviable position as the most profitable newspaper in the world on a "per reader" basis, profit declined since peaking in 1997 at HK$805 million[1], yet its growth potential is viewed as being largely dependent on its ability to penetrate the wider Chinese market[3].
The Group reported net profit of HK$338 million for the year 2006 (2005 = HK$246m), the operating profit of HK$419m (2005 = HK$306m) was attributable mainly to the newspaper operation.[4].
The selling price of the paper is HK$7 each from Monday to Saturday, and HK$8 for the Sunday Morning Post. Discounted price is given for students' subscription.
The printed version of the Post is in a broadsheet format which has the following sections: City, Sport, Business, Classifieds, Style, Property; the Sunday edition contains a Review section, Sport, Travel, Motoring, a Sunday Magazine, and "Young Post", targeted at the younger readers.
On March 26, 2007, the post was given a face-lift, with new presentation and fonts[5].
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. Unlike the online business model of The Standard, whose archives dating from 1995 to date are freely accessible online, access to the Post's articles are restricted to subscribers only.
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In November 2006, Editor-in-chief Mark Clifford summarily dismissed two senior editors at the paper,chief articles editor Trevor Wilson and articles editor Paul Ruffini, for creating a traditional "leaving page", a humorous mock-up front page, for a departing colleague, which featured the word "c**t" in a headline (see image).[6]
The offending (sic) spoof
- The paper has spawned a satirical website NTSCMP.com (Not the South China Morning Post)
- ^ a b Smith, Patrick. "Clash of civilizations at Hong Kong newspaper", International Herald Tribune, November 19, 2006. Retrieved on March 22, 2007.
- ^ Audit Report. Hong Kong Audit Bureau of Circulations. Retrieved on March 21, 2007.
- ^ "Two more top editors leave South China Morning Post", International Herald Tribune, January 29, 2007. Retrieved on March 21, 2007.
- ^ "Ad revenue lifts SCMP profit 37pc", South China Morning Post, March 27, 2007.
- ^ "to be inserted", South China Morning Post, March 26, 2007, p. 1.
- ^ "The Cultural Gap in Hong Kong Journalism", East South West North, November 13, 2006. Retrieved on March 22, 2007.