| Richard Li's New Journalism Venture |
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| Written by John Berthelsen | |
| Tuesday, 15 September 2009 | |
 Tycoon funds a specialized Internet startup
We are seeking editors for a variety of roles for a new Hong Kong-based English-language online news and data/analytics service focused on Greater China aimed at professional investors and multinationals. When the above ad began circulating on job boards frequented by journalists a few months ago, people sat up and took notice. Someone was actually hiring in a business that has been beset by gloom and doom in recent years as a result of the migration of readers and ad dollars to the Internet. That someone, it turns out, has very deep pockets and could become a serious new entry in the rarefied world of specialized business reporting on the Web. Before the end of October, a well-financed operation backed by Richard Li, the billionaire head of the PCCW telecoms empire, is to become the latest journalism enterprise to see if it can survive on the Internet and through niche marketing. Called, at least for the moment, Cai Business Indepth Ltd., it promises specialized business journalism and data delivery. Launch is a month away. This not just another Web site, however. Besides Li's deep pockets, the service is backed by strategic alliances with the Hong Kong Economic Journal, which Li also owns, and Caijing, the highly-respected Shanghai-based business news magazine. The new service, beamed specifically at financial institutions, is to be delivered both across the internet and through proprietary terminals, much as Bloomberg's service is, as well as to handheld devices like the ubiquitous Blackberry. Li seems to think his timing is right to catch the wave with a service that takes advantage of both a proprietary news model and the Internet. "The most exciting future for journalism in Asia rests in China, in Chinese," said Craig Smith, a highly regarded former New York Times correspondent brought in by Li as executive editor after a stint with Caijing. "We are building an English-language service and we have no plans for expanding beyond business and finance. That said, insofar as we are a niche player based on a subscription-model, we are part of a great migration away from general, advertising-based printed news products and toward something more economically sustainable." "China's print media have not yet felt the chill that is sweeping English-language mainstream media," Smith said in an email exchange.* "But I believe China will eventually face the same challenges. So, in that sense, yes, I think we do represent a future for Asian media in a very narrow way. Whether we represent THE future has yet to be seen because the subscription-based niche model may only be a stop in the road toward the new media world that awaits us." Globally the biggest and most successful proprietary business news model is the Bloomberg operation, which has been phenomenally successful in delivering not only news but also a huge stream of data to other news organizations and companies at a time when the news business itself is in trouble. Bloomberg's operation has continued to broaden away from pure financial news to politics, sports and culture, becoming in the process a general interest wire service. The recently merged Thomson Reuters combination has also been revitalized in the last year. Dow Jones, now owned by Rupert Murdoch, is also being rebuilt after years of slumber under its previous owners. In China itself, the new venture faces Xinhua, the official Chinese government news agency, which has sought to compete, so far unsuccessfully, with financial news providers as well as the wider international press. Bogged down by its reputation as a government mouthpiece, Xinhua nonetheless has the deep pockets of the Chinese government behind it. "We do not expect to compete with Bloomberg," Smith said. "We consider ourselves a complement to existing global services like Bloomberg, not a replacement. We see ourselves as a niche player, although hopefully a unique niche player. How we define that niche is something that I can't really talk about, in part because we are still building our team and both the target and our intentions are moving." For this to work, the material it cranks out will have to be very good and very fast, like Bloomberg. In addition to its own reporting and a data stream developed in-house, sources say the news site will use content from both Caijing and the Hong Economic Journal, which combine to give the new operation considerable gravitas. Although Caijing's mother company is the Chinese Securities Market Research and Design Center, a private company with strong official links, it consistently prints well-grounded, exclusive, polished stories that often run counter to China's official line. Likewise, the 35-year-old Hong Kong Economic Journal, also published in Chinese, is regarded as objective, well balanced and unafraid to take on either the Hong Kong or the Chinese governments. The news organization is expected to come out with a new online English-only version in October as well, to be run by K C Chan, the paper's chief editor. As many as 28 bilingual editors and reporters, expected to speak both English and either Cantonese or Mandarin, are to be based in Hong Kong covering greater China business news and writing in English. Three more reporters are to be located in Taipei, according to sources within the organization who declined to be named. Reportedly a top sales executive has been hired away from Bloomberg to run the new operation, although his name doesn't appear on the organization's website and Smith declined to comment. Other Bloomberg veterans are also involved. Richard Li is always described in news stories as the son of Hong Kong's wealthiest tycoon, Li Ka-shing, which must irritate him no end. He has been seeking to expand his media empire from the time when, using money he borrowed from his father, he bought into a local satellite0000 television firm, Star TV, taking it regional and then selling it to Rupert Murdoch in the mid-90s for US$950 million — one of the biggest ever media deals at the time. Li then took an obscure telecoms company, Tricom International, and turned it into his Pacific Century Cyber Works, or PCCW. From that point forward, he has sometimes faced difficulty, particularly in his attempts to do something about the one-time Hong Kong Telecom franchise he bought from Cable & Wireless just in time to run into the buzz saw of deregulation. In 2003 PCCW turned its fortunes around somewhat by establishing Now TV, a broadband television network, that has since become one of the world's largest such operations. PCCW's Internet operations have also been successful. Fons Tuinstra, the Antwerp-based operator of the website China Herald, wrote recently that "More than one Hong Kong tycoon, most recently Richard Li, has been looking at ways to reenter (the news) market with a new venture." Li, he said, "rooted in a firm tradition of the second-generation Hong Kong tycoons, only has to spend money, not make it, and for any journalist — like we are used to prostituting ourselves to anybody who is willing to pay our expenses — an ambitious tycoon is too nice to refuse." An eager corps of journalists is waiting to do Li's bidding, and hoping they will prevail. *the fact that the conversation with Smith was an email exchange was inadvertently left out of the original.
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Do we need another bloomberg?
written by CHINA HERALD , October 05, 2009
Sure he's Chinese, but news is a commodity and if he's aiming for the site to be in English, doesn't Bloomberg already cover that beat?
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written by Tiffany Necklaces , September 26, 2009 Although Caijing's mother company is the Chinese Securities Market Research and Design Center, a private company with strong official links, it consistently prints well-grounded, exclusive, polished stories that often run counter to China's official line. Likewise, the 35-year-old Hong Kong Economic Journal, also published in Chinese, is regarded as objective, well balanced and unafraid to take on either the Hong Kong or the Chinese governments. The news organization is expected to come out with a new online English-only version in October as well, to be run by K C Chan, the paper's chief editor. report abuse
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throwing away money for nothing?
written by a hack , September 16, 2009
"rooted in a firm tradition of the second-generation Hong Kong tycoons, only has to spend money, not make it, and for any journalist — like we are used to prostituting ourselves to anybody who is willing to pay our expenses — an ambitious tycoon is too nice to refuse."
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Li wouldn't throw away all that money for nothing. This is just his bait money for the big catch. Interesting, just watch! report abuse
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Welcome to the club
written by Wild man of Borneo , September 16, 2009
It only proves that business journalism is king. Welcome to the club. At least in Malaysia, a state government has realized this to be the case: http://insightsabah.gov.my/ And it has already made an impact on the powers that matter. It's no coincidence that the federal government has announced that it will build a teaching hospital for the medical faculty of Sabah's only faculty and Prime Minister Najib has promised more investment for Sabah and Sarawak and heap praises on the Sabahans and Sarawakians for shaping is 1Malaysia concept.
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