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Saturday 17 October 2009
Top magazine’s fate hangs on woman of steel
In a country where tough censorship discourages flair in the media, few journalists have made as much impact and garnered as much acclaim as Hu Shuli, managing editor of Caijing magazine.
In a country where tough censorship discourages flair in the media, few journalists have made as much impact and garnered as much acclaim as Hu Shuli, managing editor of Caijing magazine.
The same can be said about the magazine Hu helped create 11 years ago. Caijing, which is published twice a month, has carved out a reputation as a trusted source of news on the mainland for its bold investigative reports and consistently high standard of journalism.
So a massive walkout recently and an ongoing power struggle between Hu’s team and the magazine’s parent company, the Stock Exchange Executive Council, over editorial and financial control at Caijing, made international headlines and triggered intense speculation about the fate of what is arguably the mainland’s most influential business publication.
Much of the speculation centres on the future of Hu, who is widely regarded as the soul of the magazine.
The departure of dozens of employees from Caijing’s business department and the possible resignation of Hu underscored the division between Hu and the magazine’s parent company, led by former Wall Street banker Wang Boming . It comes at a time when the mainland’s print media face stiff competition from the internet and other new media, and strict censorship.
The dispute threatens the future of Caijing and its brand of journalism but the progress of negotiations between the staff and management remains unclear.
Hu, 56, is a small woman known for her charm, but also strength and frankness. Her bold exposes in the magazine about stock market insider trading, corruption and medical blunders have made her a formidable player in the media industry, and earned her the title of “the most dangerous woman” within the securities industry.
Hu’s grand-uncle was Hu Yuzhi, a pioneer of Chinese journalism, and she cut her teeth as a young reporter with the Workers’ Daily, starting there in 1982. But it was a five-month fellowship in the United States in 1987 that prompted her to reflect on her career and lead, eventually, to her defection to Chinese Business Times in 1992. This was a bold move because the paper is not a state-owned publication, and it showed her aspiration to engage in serious journalism.
In 1998, she left to launch Caijing magazine. The magazine had its first big break in October 2000 when it published an investigative report exposing a massive falsification of profits by Yinguangxia Holdings, one of the largest listed firms at the time, that subsequently led to several company executives being jailed.
In 2003, Caijing ran a series of weekly supplements on the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome on the mainland, at a time when the central government and most official media were still in a state of denial about the disease.
Hu continued to push the boundaries of investigative reporting with a lengthy report during the Sichuan earthquake last year suggesting that rampant disregard of construction standards largely led to the collapse of many school buildings.
“They got angry. Very, very angry,” Hu told The New Yorker magazine last month, referring to the response by authorities to the report.
However, both she and Caijing again managed to escape official censure - intriguing analysts since some of her peers paid the price for running equally aggressive campaigns.
Li Datong, former editor of China Youth Daily’s Bingdian Weekly, was sacked in February 2006 for publishing a piece written by Sun Yat-sen University professor Yuan Weishi challenging conventional interpretations of historical events such as the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. This ruffled the feathers of a group of historians, who lodged complaints with senior officials about the professor and the publication.
Jiang Yiping, a senior executive with Guangzhou-based Nanfang Media group, who oversaw the liberal Southern Metropolis Daily, was removed from her position in December last year and transferred to a minor role after running reports that were deemed to cast authorities in a bad light. One of these was an investigative report on a disco fire in Shenzhen three months earlier.
Media specialists say that under Hu’s leadership Caijing has become one of China’s first noteworthy magazines built on Western journalism practices. Its reporters are forbidden to take money from PR companies, a widely accepted practice among mainland reporters.
Analysts say the magazine is about as good as a media outlet can get on the mainland because Hu’s team picked business as a perfect niche to give them leeway to do investigative work.
Renmin University professor Yu Guoming said that Hu was able to steer clear of trouble largely because authorities give business reporting more freedom than political news reporting.
The professor said Hu’s connections to the leadership gave her a better insight into the rules of the game and its boundaries. “She could dare to go out there and do it because she knows where the bottom line is.”
Hu, admitted in a China News Weekly article on October 7 that the pressure, including criticism from vested interests, was enormous.
Management at Caijing are constantly reminded of the limits on press freedom. Wang has reportedly admitted that they were ordered by government censors to carry out “self-criticism” on several occasions.
The magazine was forced to cancel a special reflective issue in the wake of the SARS outbreak, and recently it was ordered to recall an issue that exposed rampant corruption surrounding the construction of the new CCTV headquarters, where a hotel building was gutted in an unauthorised fireworks display in February.
Huang Yu, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, said editorial intervention and financial constraints had been recurring problems at Caijing, but it would be a shame if Hu was forced to leave. “Caijing would not be the same magazine without Hu because she is the soul of the Caijing brand,” Huang said.
Yu, the Renmin University professor, agreed, saying that since its inception Caijing had set itself apart from most mainland publications by building itself largely upon Hu’s personality, style and vision. “If she had to leave, her departure would no doubt have a huge impact on the magazine.”
Yu said Hu had the upper hand in the current negotiations because of her immense influence on the magazine. He hoped Hu and the parent company would make concessions and find a win-win solution to hold the magazine together.
However, the professor had reservations about the new publication which, according to media speculation, Hu planned to start after leaving Caijing.
“After all, how a media publication grows has as much to do with where it started and flourished,” Yu said. “It’s like a hand transplant - it might recover 90 per cent of its function on a new arm, but it’s never the hand it used to be.”
Top magazine’s fate hangs on woman of steel
ReplyDeleteRaymond Li
17 October 2009
In a country where tough censorship discourages flair in the media, few journalists have made as much impact and garnered as much acclaim as Hu Shuli, managing editor of Caijing magazine.
The same can be said about the magazine Hu helped create 11 years ago. Caijing, which is published twice a month, has carved out a reputation as a trusted source of news on the mainland for its bold investigative reports and consistently high standard of journalism.
So a massive walkout recently and an ongoing power struggle between Hu’s team and the magazine’s parent company, the Stock Exchange Executive Council, over editorial and financial control at Caijing, made international headlines and triggered intense speculation about the fate of what is arguably the mainland’s most influential business publication.
Much of the speculation centres on the future of Hu, who is widely regarded as the soul of the magazine.
The departure of dozens of employees from Caijing’s business department and the possible resignation of Hu underscored the division between Hu and the magazine’s parent company, led by former Wall Street banker Wang Boming . It comes at a time when the mainland’s print media face stiff competition from the internet and other new media, and strict censorship.
The dispute threatens the future of Caijing and its brand of journalism but the progress of negotiations between the staff and management remains unclear.
Hu, 56, is a small woman known for her charm, but also strength and frankness. Her bold exposes in the magazine about stock market insider trading, corruption and medical blunders have made her a formidable player in the media industry, and earned her the title of “the most dangerous woman” within the securities industry.
Hu’s grand-uncle was Hu Yuzhi, a pioneer of Chinese journalism, and she cut her teeth as a young reporter with the Workers’ Daily, starting there in 1982. But it was a five-month fellowship in the United States in 1987 that prompted her to reflect on her career and lead, eventually, to her defection to Chinese Business Times in 1992. This was a bold move because the paper is not a state-owned publication, and it showed her aspiration to engage in serious journalism.
In 1998, she left to launch Caijing magazine. The magazine had its first big break in October 2000 when it published an investigative report exposing a massive falsification of profits by Yinguangxia Holdings, one of the largest listed firms at the time, that subsequently led to several company executives being jailed.
In 2003, Caijing ran a series of weekly supplements on the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome on the mainland, at a time when the central government and most official media were still in a state of denial about the disease.
Hu continued to push the boundaries of investigative reporting with a lengthy report during the Sichuan earthquake last year suggesting that rampant disregard of construction standards largely led to the collapse of many school buildings.
“They got angry. Very, very angry,” Hu told The New Yorker magazine last month, referring to the response by authorities to the report.
However, both she and Caijing again managed to escape official censure - intriguing analysts since some of her peers paid the price for running equally aggressive campaigns.
Li Datong, former editor of China Youth Daily’s Bingdian Weekly, was sacked in February 2006 for publishing a piece written by Sun Yat-sen University professor Yuan Weishi challenging conventional interpretations of historical events such as the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. This ruffled the feathers of a group of historians, who lodged complaints with senior officials about the professor and the publication.
Jiang Yiping, a senior executive with Guangzhou-based Nanfang Media group, who oversaw the liberal Southern Metropolis Daily, was removed from her position in December last year and transferred to a minor role after running reports that were deemed to cast authorities in a bad light. One of these was an investigative report on a disco fire in Shenzhen three months earlier.
ReplyDeleteMedia specialists say that under Hu’s leadership Caijing has become one of China’s first noteworthy magazines built on Western journalism practices. Its reporters are forbidden to take money from PR companies, a widely accepted practice among mainland reporters.
Analysts say the magazine is about as good as a media outlet can get on the mainland because Hu’s team picked business as a perfect niche to give them leeway to do investigative work.
Renmin University professor Yu Guoming said that Hu was able to steer clear of trouble largely because authorities give business reporting more freedom than political news reporting.
The professor said Hu’s connections to the leadership gave her a better insight into the rules of the game and its boundaries. “She could dare to go out there and do it because she knows where the bottom line is.”
Hu, admitted in a China News Weekly article on October 7 that the pressure, including criticism from vested interests, was enormous.
Management at Caijing are constantly reminded of the limits on press freedom. Wang has reportedly admitted that they were ordered by government censors to carry out “self-criticism” on several occasions.
The magazine was forced to cancel a special reflective issue in the wake of the SARS outbreak, and recently it was ordered to recall an issue that exposed rampant corruption surrounding the construction of the new CCTV headquarters, where a hotel building was gutted in an unauthorised fireworks display in February.
Huang Yu, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, said editorial intervention and financial constraints had been recurring problems at Caijing, but it would be a shame if Hu was forced to leave. “Caijing would not be the same magazine without Hu because she is the soul of the Caijing brand,” Huang said.
Yu, the Renmin University professor, agreed, saying that since its inception Caijing had set itself apart from most mainland publications by building itself largely upon Hu’s personality, style and vision. “If she had to leave, her departure would no doubt have a huge impact on the magazine.”
Yu said Hu had the upper hand in the current negotiations because of her immense influence on the magazine. He hoped Hu and the parent company would make concessions and find a win-win solution to hold the magazine together.
However, the professor had reservations about the new publication which, according to media speculation, Hu planned to start after leaving Caijing.
“After all, how a media publication grows has as much to do with where it started and flourished,” Yu said. “It’s like a hand transplant - it might recover 90 per cent of its function on a new arm, but it’s never the hand it used to be.”