The Far Eastern Economic Review, September 26th 2009 P36 (ファーイースタン エコノミック レビュー)
When this correspondent stepped off the plane in the mid-1990s to begin a reporting life in Asia, the Far Eastern Economic Review was the most successful regional current-affairs magazine in the world. In Asia it was revered for the calibre of its reporters, for its analysis of politics and business and, especially, for getting up the noses of autocrats and tycoons. For businessmen, policymakers, analysts and journalists, it was Asia's mustread. And, wonder of wonders, it made money.
Yet in a few swift years the Review's circulation and advertising revenues imploded. Radical measures were taken, though some hastened the decline. In 2001 its owners, Dow Jones, now part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, merged the Review's staff with those at the Wall Street Journal. Five years ago it killed the weekly entirely. The Review re-emerged as a monthly run by a skeletal staff. This week Dow Jones announced that this, too, will be shut：the Far Eastern Economic Review will be no more. Broad howls of protest have come from Asia hands, though the Review they knew died years ago. As, perhaps, did their Asia. For the story of how the most admired publication in the most vibrant region in the world came unstuck throws light as much on how Asia has changed as on the management of the Review itself.
It was born out of chaos. A Jewish emigre from Austria, Eric Halpern, gravitated to Shanghai, where he founded a fortnightly business magazine. During the Chinese civil war Halpern decamped to Hong Kong, war-torn but by then back in British hands. He started the Far Eastern Economic Review in 1946 as a business and news magazine. Halpern, a master of timing, was adamant that the prospects for Asian prosperity were very good. That was not altogether obvious at the time.
Halpern wore a Burmese longyi to work, and left it draped over his chair for his successor. The Review of those days exuded the air of a colonial enterprise - the affection of the longyi was a bit of a giveaway, as was the identity of the magazine's biggest ultimate shareholder, the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank. Yet its journalists, Asian as well as expats, were pioneers in informed reporting, including from repressed states. They wrote about profound events - China's cultural revolution and then reforms, the end of the Vietnam war, the Cambodian genocide - with authority and bucketloads of scoops.
Partly because it was a must-read, strongmen took exception to its plain talk. Correspondents have been jailed in China, Malaysia and Singapore. The Review has a long history of being taken on by Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore's courts. Indeed, it is currently appealing against a libel ruling in favour of Mr Lee, Singapore's “minister mentor”, and his son, the prime minister. Not for the first time, the Review is banned in Singapore.
One former editor, Philip Bowring, pins the problem for the Review's decline on Dow Jones, which took control in 1987. He says that its executives parachuted in from New York wanted to homogenise the reporting, to make its coverage less driven by the whims of correspondents in the field. It was, in effect, a dumbing-down and Mr Bowring was sacked for objecting. On the other hand, the painstaking reporting came at a price. Some articles, a fan of the old Review admits on a blog this week, were “practically unreadable”. The “practically” was generous.
Yet whatever Dow Jones's missteps, the Review faced nearly insurmountable challenges to a business model that relied on advertisements sold across the region. That worked well when Western brands selling watches, cognac and the like wanted to reach a fairly narrow elite in each Asian country. But the model foundered as prosperity trickled downward through society.
Now advertisers - Western and home-grown - want to take aim at buyers more carefully, shaping campaigns for individual markets. For that, they seek out publications in the national (and sometimes regional) markets of China, Malaysia, Indonesia or Japan. Local publications are the beneficiaries, and financial success has helped some develop strong reporting instincts, even taking up the crusading role the Review once had. The Review is a victim because, from an advertiser's point of view, Asia has ceased to exist.
What if Asia as an idea no longer exists not just for advertisers but for most of those who live within its supposed boundaries? It is a nagging thought that occasionally wakes this correspondent in the early hours, for it could do him out of a job. Certainly, with hindsight there is hubris in the Review's full title. Its purview is only “Far Eastern” from the perspective of somebody from outside, and even them seems to ignore the indisputably Asian Indian subcontinent. The term, too, was a colonial enterprise. As for Asia, a broader region beyond China's shadow that the Review more and more came to report on, nobody there can agree on what it is, other than that it is not the West. Interminable historical disputes among China, Japan and South Korea, for instance, or the stand-off this month between Thais and Cambodians over a disputed temple, are just two examples of how Asians seem more sure of what divides them than what united them. This can take early-mor
ning thoughts down rather gloomy channels.
Yet the Review also grew redundant for a nearly opposite reason：Asia's economic interactions with the rest of the world. As these have deepened, vindicating Eric Halpern's contrarian optimism, it has become ever harder to talk about the region in isolation. The same goes for worries such as epidemics, migration, pressure on scarce resources and, particularly, climate change. These days, Asia is only Asia in so far as it is part of a bigger global picture. That is not the Review's fault. And in this respect at least it should temper regret at the review's demise.
