"Goodbye, Asean..."
World media interest on Southeast Asia falling fast. Foreign journalists told: "If it’s not China, we don’t want your stories. By Seah Chiang Nee
Nov 11, 2001

Interest among the foreign media on the recent election in Singapore was probably one of the lowest in recent history.

I noticed it and asked a friend. "I couldn’t sell the story to my editor," the veteran foreign journalist replied. Singapore is not the only country being bypassed.

For some time now, media interest in Southeast Asia had been declining almost as fast as Asean’s waning influence. Budgets for covering the region had been drastically cut.

For a long time, correspondents have been using Singapore and Hong Kong as bases to cover the region but during the past year, these trips have become less infrequent.

Fewer trips, fewer stories.

Their editors are also responding to a loss in reader interest. After all, there are bigger editorial pickings elsewhere, like Afghanistan.

"There’s little interest in countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and your Singapore, too," explained the journalist, a long-timer in Asean.

China has taken over – not only in investment or trade but also media interest. "If it’s China, yes. Anywhere else, forget it," editors are telling their correspondents.

At one time, this trend would have been welcomed by authoritarian or corrupt regimes, which disliked "these pesky foreign reporters." Not today.

Faced with a prolonged crisis, Asean is working hard to attract foreign investment and tourism, for which the media plays a crucial role.

In recent months, another storm has been blowing both across USA and Asia.

Recession and declining circulation has brought about closure of bureaus and retrenchment of journalists. No one has been spared. They range from America’s titans to Asian middle-rankers.

Cut, retrench, merge operations – or perish. There is a lot of blood flowing in the media world and the new jobless include – or will soon include – old-timers to fresh entrants.

The most recent bloodletting is the merger of editorial staffs of the Asian Wall Street Journal and its weekly magazine, the Far Eastern Economic Review, which cut their combined staffs by a quarter.The cut is immediate and will be completed by the end of the year. By then a total of 38 of 150 jobs will have been eliminated.

"I assume this is a stopgap alternative to simply closing the Review," Mr. Phil Revzin, a Dow Jones vice president who controls both the newspaper and the magazine told Bloomberg.

He denied the company planned to shutter the magazine. "If we wanted to do that, we would have," he said.

Editorial staff at Dow Jones' Hong Kong-based newspaper and magazine will be combined across eight Asian bureaus, some of which will span more than one city, according to an e-mail circulated to employees.

Singaporean Reginald Chua, the paper's editor, and Michael Vatikiotis, who edits the Review, will share responsibilities and continue to report to Revzin, according to Bloomberg.

"Bureau chiefs will work with editors of both publications to select stories and assign reporters for the daily paper and the magazine," the e-mail said.

Bloomberg reports:
The two publications already share circulation, accounting, marketing and other departments. The Asian Wall Street Journal recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.

The Review was first published in 1946. Although the Review raised its average weekly circulation 3 percent last year to 99,120, the increase was achieved with more cut-price sales to airlines, hotels and other bulk-buyers.

Subscription sales, traditionally the most stable source of circulation revenue, fell 8 percent to 40,399 copies a week, while the number of these sold below full price jumped eight-fold to 9,124, according to the Hong Kong Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The Journal's average daily circulation rose 16 percent in the first half from a year earlier to 84,249 copies. Subscription sales grew 10 percent to 27,301, according to HKABC data.

Singapore, too

Several days ago, Singapore media giant, Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) retrenched 96 staff, trimming 20 percent of jobs at its television and Internet subsidiaries to save S$8.8 million.

Television unit MediaWorks shed 73 workers, and 23 came from news and information website AsiaOne.

SPH said the cuts were necessary to stem losses "by restructuring business operations to focus on viable revenue streams that will enable AsiaOne and MediaWorks to ride out these tough and uncertain times".

The total layoffs, and an across-the-board 12.5 percent salary cut for remaining TV staff would save an estimated S$8.8 million, it said.

The English channel would continue to operate but its resources would be merged with the more successful Channel U, SPH said in a statement.

MediaWorks chief executive Lee Cheok Yew dismissed speculation that the English language channel would close, saying it would cater to a niche audience.

"TV Works will continue to be an integral member of the Media Works family, but must be operated as a special interest channel," he said.

Wherever the location, the media scene is not a pretty one. The tunnel is still dark.

Seah Chiang Nee