Tuesday 17 November 2009

80 percent of Caijing staff quit to follow editor

Nearly 150 of the approximately 180 editorial staff members at Caijing have resigned following the departure of Hu Shuli, the founder and editor of the mainland’s most influential business magazine.

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80 percent of Caijing staff quit to follow editor

Magazine’s founder to set up new venture after row with publisher

Raymond Li
12 November 2009

Nearly 150 of the approximately 180 editorial staff members at Caijing have resigned following the departure of Hu Shuli, the founder and editor of the mainland’s most influential business magazine.

The staff members are expected to join Hu at a new multimedia venture, which has not yet been officially announced.

A former Caijing manager said yesterday that employees would have to wait until today to find out how long they needed to stay at the magazine following their resignation, as their contracts did not specify a notice period.

“But they’ll probably have to stay until the next issue of Caijing hits the newsstands,” the manager said.

The November 9 issue of the fortnightly magazine is expected to be the last edited by Hu. She resigned on Monday after she failed to resolve simmering disagreements with Caijing’s owner and publisher, the Stock Exchange Executive Council (SEEC), which is led by former Wall Street banker Wang Boming.

The disputes centred on the future direction of the magazine and control over the approximately 200 million yuan (HK$227 million) in advertising revenue the magazine earns each year.

Hu will take up a post at Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-sen University as head of its school of communication and design.

She is expected to launch a new multimedia venture that would include business magazines and online business news.

Hu enjoyed immense popularity among the staff at Caijing, a publication she helped create 11 years ago.

It carved out a reputation for investigative reporting that trod a delicate line through the mainland’s tightly censored media environment.

The split that had developed at Caijing came to light when 70 employees of the business department, including general manager Wu Chuanhui, resigned last month.

Hu’s team has already leased two floors as a temporary office at the Winterless Centre in Beijing’s central business district. Some of the business staff have already moved in, indicating that she has already received some initial investment.

Meanwhile, Caijing’s publishers are scrambling to put together a team to fill the vacuum that has been left by the mass departures.

The former Caijing manager confirmed that Yang Lang , a former member of the magazine’s editorial board, had been appointed deputy editor-in-chief and Zhao Li , formerly the chief editor of the weekly financial newspaper Investor Journal, had been appointed associate editor.

Zhao and He Gang , formerly the news editor at Investor Journal, had tested two trial issues of Caijing relying mostly on articles by Investor Journal staff, who had been recruited as potential replacement staff, and the SEEC was satisfied with their quality, the former manager said. It was also reported that He Li , CBN Weekly editor-in-chief, had resigned and would join the new Caijing team.