Amy Gu "upset"

media - Something is brewing at the South China Morning Post

South China Morning Post business reporter and fellow blogger Amy Gu reports she is upset about a report in the Asia Sentinel about the ongoing trouble at her paper.
Amy is - as she rightfully concludes - not in a position to address this kind of "biased" reports, but that leaves me with only more questions. She defends her paper:

Many outsiders, especially people doing business in the mainland China, have seen our changes in the business coverage during the past seven months. We have more breaking news, more in-depth features, and more efforts in trying to cover a true mainland China. The direction is different, but absolutely correct, while most of the readers I've talked to praised it as a good move.

Let me first explain a bit of the background of this daily English-language paper in Hong Kong, since quite a few people outside Hong Kong might not know it. The South China Morning Post was and still is highly profitable. Until, says, 1997, it represented the British establishment in Hong Kong. The tone was firmly critical on China, but often - there were some notable exceptions - based on pretty solid reporting.
Management rolled into a bit of an identity crisis as China took control of Hong Kong in 1997 and every now and then we would notice articles that would be too propagandistic for the Chinese propaganda paper China Daily. Star reporters were fired and plans to become a really leading Asian newspaper were shelved. The paper withdrew to its regional base in Hong Kong,.
While it developed a website, the company has never come to terms with the digital reality we are living in now. In the 1990s we had to rely on the paper to get at least some information, but now the internet has opened information streams that have made the South China Morning Post oblivious. By maintaining a solid financial firewall, its articles fail to become part of the ongoing online discussions, making into the laughing stock of the 21st century.
That is perhaps the drawback of being a quasi-monopolist in a higly profitable market: you can delay facing realities a bit longer.
So, now there is something brewing, but unless management decides to enter the modern media society, we will never know what is brewing at the South China Morning Post. And, unlike Amy Gu, do we really care?