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Clash of civilizations at Hong Kong newspaper - Business - International Herald Tribune
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Clash of civilizations at Hong Kong newspaper

HONG KONG: "We have many challenges," the editor in chief of the South China Morning Post wrote to his staff in an internal memo that was leaked over the weekend, "but our problems are minor compared with those that many newspapers face."

Challenges, yes - what newspaper nowadays does not have its share? But minor problems? That is not how it looks to many Post watchers here at the moment, not with the newsroom of Hong Kong's premier English-language daily in open revolt against Mark Clifford, the American who took the editor's chair just seven months ago.

The incident provoking many of the Post's 300 editorial employees has riveted readers here in recent days. From afar it may seem like an insignificant kerfuffle, but it underscores the difficulties facing what has long been distinguished as the world's most profitable newspaper on a per-reader basis.

What prompted such ruminations began with what is known in the British newspaper tradition as a leaving page, a mock-up of a front page filled with inside jokes and presented to a departing colleague. This one, a farewell to an editor whom Clifford had dismissed, was a rough roasting by any measure.

The copy took crude aim at a senior executive on the news side. The lead headline was meant to be funny but was also vulgar, even if the offending four- letter word was cast with asterisks. All in all it was not, as Clifford put it, "something you would show to your mother."

Having come across a copy of the page, Clifford powered through the newsroom like a Puritan minister, according to several accounts, and fired two editors for producing obscenities with newspaper property. Late last week, roughly a third of the newsroom staff signed a letter of protest against the firings, and when the letter circulated outside, a small, messy tiff exploded into a large, public embarrassment.

Clifford declined to comment. Newsroom employees spoke only on the condition that they would not be identified.

As many staff members view it, the incident was a cultural skirmish waiting to ignite. The Post has long been multicultural, a rainbow of editors and reporters of British, Australian, American, Chinese, Indian and Sri Lankan extraction. Founded in 1904, the paper has also retained the remnants of certain somewhat paternalistic traditions. While dismissals are far from unknown at the Post, there is an unwritten assumption that, although there is no union, management's prerogatives are not unlimited.

Clifford, by several employees' accounts, may be too fastidious for a staff given to an old-fashioned style of newsroom camaraderie and too prone to the hire 'em, fire 'em ethos often identified with the global American companies he covered for many years as a correspondent, first for The Far Eastern Economic Review and Business Week and more recently for The Standard in Hong Kong.

"He's very American in his way of doing things," a senior Post editor said. "He doesn't really understand his own employees."

Many newsroom employees recognize that Clifford was brought in as a "change agent," in contemporary management parlance, and that his task is not an easy one. He is the paper's fifth editor in a decade, each of his predecessors having done little to alter a culture that is viewed inside and outside the paper as in need of an update.

In the newsroom, recent memos from Clifford suggest that he views his principal challenge as breaking up entrenched cliques of editors and uniting a staff that has long been divided - not least according to salary levels - between local employees and expatriates.

Beyond the newsroom, Clifford is seeking to expand a paper that has flattened out in its home market and has not yet penetrated the mainland. Greater China is a natural frontier but one that faces him with new questions of editorial independence - a particularly sensitive issue for the Post, whose principal shareholders, the Kuok family, are viewed widely as being supportive of Beijing. Though the family has made no public statements, Clifford is believed to have its support.

The Post's circulation, though down from its peak a decade ago, is now steady at 104,000. Reflecting cost-control efforts, net income for the six months to June 30 rose 30 percent from the year-earlier period, to 146.5 million Hong Kong dollars, or $18.8 million.

But profit peaked in 1997, the year Britain handed Hong Kong back to China, at 805 million dollars. The paper has earned less than that in the last four years combined.

Ahead lies the task of circulating the Post beyond its traditional market. Because of his many years of experience as a correspondent and editor in the region, Clifford is considered by many industry observers to be the right choice if anyone is to open new opportunities.

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