As I studied Chinese at the East China Normal University in Shanghai, I would collected my newspapers and magazines (like porn in a brown envelope, and always a few days too late), and I would sit down with a beer in the bar of the building for foreign students to digest the world news.
Meanwhile, the two magazines have folded. I just thought the other day the South China Morning Post had an interesting article, but their outdated firewall kept me effectively from reading it. Since those days, the internet and the social media have effectively replaced my news consumption. The whole world is at my fingertips, without making them dirty. And the old media, in digital format, still belong to my news digest, but very few are Hong Kong based.
How has Hong Kong fared and their news outlets, is the subject of next week's China Weekly Hangout? In 1997, when China took over Hong Kong, many feared Asia's media capital would be killed. Well, it looks it has been killed, but not on orders from Beijing, but by the failure to keep up with the times.
Reason enough to organize on March 14 a China Weekly Hangout on the state of the media in Hong Kong. Joining is from Hong Kong is +Paul Fox , lecturer (Asian Studies / Media Studies) at the HKU School of Professional and Continuing Education, and possibly a whole other bunch of people.
The China Weekly Hangout is held on Thursday 14 March, 10pm Beijing Time, 3pm CET (Europe) and 9am EST (US/Canada). You can register at our event page. If you are not selected for the official hangout, you can leave your remarks and questions at Twitter and Google+ (do include our hash tag #CWHCWH).
Please note we try to limit the duration of the hangout to 30, 45 minutes at most. If you report for duty too late, you might not get access. In the future we hope to add annotation to the hangouts, so browsing becomes easier (and we might make them longer), but current resources do not yet allow this now.
You can view our hangout both here and at our event page. Earlier China Weekly Hangouts, you can find here.
How are China's media doing in Africa? That is the question the China Weekly Hangout is asking itself coming Thursday, March 7, in a first session on China's international politics. We will be joined by Eric Olander of the China Africa Project, and other guests. You can read our announcement here, or register directly to participate on our event page.
