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Asiaweek Magazine Closes

Furthering hard times in Hong Kong media

By Dirk Beveridge/AP

Adding to the gloom in Hong Kong’s battered media industry, the publisher Time Inc. on Nov. 29 shut down its magazine Asiaweek, eliminating 80 jobs and one of the region’s two big English-language newsweeklies.

Asiaweek President Peter Brack said a difficult market had been made even worse by the financial fallout from the Sept. 11 terror attacks, forcing the closure that follows other rounds of job losses in the news business here.

At Asiaweek’s corporate parent, Time Inc., Chairman and Chief Executive Don Logan said in a statement that the decision was made after reviewing Asiaweek’s “performance and its long-term business prospects.”

Logan’s statement gave no details on the magazine’s finances and a spokeswoman, Anna Soellner, said she could not provide “an exact number” for any losses.

Asiaweek said the issue released on Nov. 29 would be its last, leaving Asia with just one big regional newsweekly, the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), which recently saw its editorial staff merged with the daily Asian Wall Street Journal for a loss of 36 editorial jobs.

Asiaweek had been the main competitor for FEER, published by Dow Jones & Co.

Time Inc. said the Asiaweek staff will be paid through the end of December and then offered help finding other work, possibly including jobs elsewhere in Time Inc. or AOL Time Warner.

Asiaweek was launched in 1975 and the company had attempted earlier this year to rejuvenate the magazine with a new focus on business news.

Asiaweek ended with a circulation of 120,000 but was closed along with other Time Inc. magazines that have been hit by hard times in the global advertising industry.

“Our staff’s passion, dedication and enthusiasm, which succeeded in creating a far better magazine earlier this year, have been truly impressive — and certainly made the decision even more painful,” Brack said in a statement issued after he met with the magazine’s employees.

Several Asiaweek journalists, reached by telephone, declined to comment. About half of the jobs being lost were editorial positions, Soellner said.

The recent bad economic times have prompted other job cuts in the Hong Kong media business, including 18 positions at the English-language daily South China Morning Post, and 100 jobs at its rival, the tabloid Hong Kong iMail.