Tribute to the Far Eastern Economic Review
Title -- 4552 REGION: Tribute to the Far Eastern Economic Review
Date -- 2 November 2004
Byline -- None
Origin -- Pacific Media Watch
Source -- The Standard (HK), lin.neumann@globalchina.com 31/10/2004
Copyright - A. Lin Neumann
Status -- Unabridged
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NO FEER, NO FAVOUR
By A. Lin Neumann
HONGKONG (The Standard-Hongkong//Pacific Media Watch): To anyone outside journalism, the level of mourning for the death-by-corporate-downsizing of the Dow Jones-owned weekly Far Eastern Economic Review magazine this past week might seem a tad excessive.
But I would argue that concern for the demise of this institution - a staple of reporting on the region since shortly after World War II - is both necessary and deserved. While I never worked for the Review, also known to many as Feer, I learned about Asia by reading it and I learned a lot about journalism through the example of its stories and the commitment of its correspondents.
It may sound trite to say that a collection of
reporters and editors putting ink to paper represents
something more than just a magazine, but in the case
of the Review in Asia, it is true. This was a
home-grown product, written and edited and run for
years by people who cared about the region, studied it
deeply and took their work seriously.
"I am very lucky because after I got to the Review , I
never wanted to work anywhere else,'' said John
McBeth, who joined the magazine in 1979 and retired
last May as Jakarta Bureau Chief. "This is really very
sad. Something you have devoted a quarter century of
your life to is gone. It was my life.''
McBeth's lament has been echoed in journalistic
quarters in Hong Kong and beyond since the magazine
effectively went out of business on Thursday.
Nearly everyone associated with the Review has reached
the same conclusion expressed by McBeth after the
closure: "I don't think Dow Jones ever understood what
our culture was and they never really put in the
effort to make the magazine succeed. This is as much a
failure of Dow Jones as it is a failure of the Review.
"I have been concerned at the size of the magazine,
the lack of advertising and, frankly, the lack of
effort being put in. I wondered how long it would go
on like this.''
For a couple of generations of journalists and
readers, especially those who got to know the magazine
from the mid-1970s to the late 80s, a period of
intense change in the region, nearly all of it
chronicled in the Review, the magazine was a
touchstone for understanding trends in business and
politics in Asia.
It could also be courageous. In 1999 Murray Heibert,
the Review's Kuala Lumpur bureau chief, stoically
faced two years of house arrest and a three-month
prison term in Malaysia on criminal libel charges that
grew out of a story he wrote for the magazine. He
could have fled the country; that he didn't was an
example that some things in journalism are worth
fighting for.
The magazine's legendary editor for 25 years, Derek
Davies, famously battled Singapore's autocratic
founder Lee Kuan Yew throughout the 1970s and 80s,
pulling the magazine out of the country rather than
toning down coverage.
For years, individual correspondents have faced
expulsion, threats, harassment and more in order to
report on the manoeuvrings and manipulations of often
corrupt and venal business and political leaders in
the region.
Not that it was a magazine above criticism. Far from
it. It was frequently an object of derision within the
profession for its overly serious tone and sometimes
self-satisfied attitude. It could be deadly dull and
full of itself, no one ever denied that fact.
When Dow Jones took over full control in 1987 - it
bought 40 per cent of the magazine in 1973 and
acquired the 51 per cent owned by the South China
Morning Post in the takeover - few would have argued
that the magazine didn't need tighter editing, sharper
pictures and a more reader-friendly approach.
After all, at its worst in the old days, it could be
dense to the point of unreadable - a journal for Asian
specialists or obsessives who could actually wade
through a six-page cover story on something like grain
blight in Mongolia.
At its worst in its present incarnation - after years
of tinkering by the Dow Jones company to make the
magazine into a snappy, happy, trend-conscious delight
for the Internet age - it could be downright silly.
For example, in the magazine's last issue as a weekly,
after 58 years of publication, most of it devoted to
serious, even groundbreaking journalism, the
publishers would not give the editors a chance to sign
off to readers.
But there was room for chillies - all eight pages of
them. The chillies were part of a newish feature
called Asia-Life, another failed chance to lure
readers who presumably don't care about thoughtful
coverage of politics and economics but do want to know
which wine goes with which chilli pepper and how to
keep a chilli pepper from bursting in the pot (prick
it with a fork before cooking).
Those were nearly the final words - save for a
back-page interview with a CEO - from the same
magazine whose correspondent, Nayan Chanda, heroically
covered the fall of Saigon to the Vietcong in 1975
until his telex line was cut.
The magazine's sign-off instead was delivered by press
release via a corporate communications hack. In that
document, Dow Jones management insisted that firing
virtually the entire staff - 80 people - and closing
down its bureaus and infrastructure amounted to little
more than a change in format from weekly to monthly.
"The format change will mark the start of a new
chapter in the Review's 58-year history,'' said Dow
Jones chairman and chief executive officer Peter Kann,
who is married to Wall Street Journal publisher Karen
Elliot House, in the release.
This monthly magazine will have a staff of two and
will solicit contributions from opinion leaders,
academics and the like. It will be headquartered in
Beijing and its new editor will be Hugo Restall,
formerly the opinion page editor of the Asian Wall
Street Journal.
Leaving aside the notion that one could actually run
the editorial operations of an independent magazine
from the capital of a dictatorship that owns and
controls China's entire domestic news media, the press
release insisted that the change was a good thing, a
paean to the magazine's founding principles.
In the "new'' monthly Review, coming in December, the
release said Restall will trace the history of the
magazine for readers "since its 1946 launch in Hong
Kong by Austrian immigrant Eric Halpern. Mr Halpern's
editorial mission, as reported in the first issue, was
to analyse and interpret financial, commercial and
industrial developments; collect economic news; and to
present views and opinions with the intent to improve
existing conditions. In the December issue, Mr Restall
re-dedicates the Review to these goals.''
Restall himself is quoted saying: "In important ways,
this newest incarnation of the Review closely
resembles the original publication launched in 1946.''
If that is so, of course, the new magazine will have
no photographs and will offer dispatches of the civil
war in China and steamship schedules from Hong Kong to
Manila.
What it won't have, of course, is a staff of
tough-minded journalists analysing the week's events
in ways that are fresh and demanding.
In spinning the closure, Kann argued that a weekly
regional magazine is an anachronism that can no longer
find advertising support.
The attitude enrages Review supporters. Philip
Bowring, who became editor of the Review in 1988 and
left after a bitter conflict with Dow Jones management
over the magazine's editorial direction, lays the
blame at the feet of the parent company, saying that
American media giants have not served the region well.
"The fact is that Dow Jones had a product in
competition with their flagship Asian Wall Street
Journal,'' Bowring said. "There is a limited
advertising market for regional publications. When
push comes to shove what do they do? They close down
the local publication.''
Bowring also cited the fate of another prominent Hong
Kong-based periodical, Asiaweek, which was purchased
by Time-Warner, suffered through several years of
drift and was finally closed in 2001.
Review insiders say they should have seen it coming.
The reporting staffs of the Review and the Asian Wall
Street Journal were merged two years ago in the last
round of downsizing. More significantly, at that time
the ad sales staffs of the two publications were also
merged.
Toasting to the end of an institution, many of the
magazine's staffers gathered at a Wan Chai bar on
Thursday to contemplate what had just happened. Two
senior correspondents said they had frequently been
asked by executives at Asian corporations they covered
why the magazine's advertising staff were hard to
reach and would often not return phone calls.
"There was no effort put in,'' said one. "They didn't
even try.''
Others involved in the last days of the Review say
that the die was cast at least three years ago and
that an intense struggle inside Dow Jones reached an
endgame a few months ago, the decision being taken in
New York and virtually the entire Review management
team kept in the dark until recently.
"It makes no sense,'' said a senior employee. "We were
losing money, sure, but less than the Asian Wall
Street Journal and things were turning around. All it
would have taken was some effort. I am just so damned
mad.''
What did you say when you found out about it? the man
was asked. "I just looked at Karen,'' he said,
referring to Journal publisher Elliot House who flew
to Hong Kong to wield the axe. "`This is a mistake,' I
told her.''
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