Ordinary Gweilo

You may have read in Tuesday’s SCMP (or here) that Spike magazine is having some financial problems.  They are looking for additional financing, and may suspend publication if none is forthcoming.  Based upon the very limited amount of display advertising they currently have, and the apparent failure of their attempt to attract classified ads, it’s not hard to see that they have problems.

My view is still that the magazine suffers from a lack of focus.  In British terms it is (in some ways) a mix of Private Eye, Punch, and the Spectator, and that’s quite ambitious for a new magazine in a small market.  I wonder how many people are put off buying it either because the cover makes it look like Private Eye (and they want something more serious), or because when they read it the contents are actually quite different.  I question the value of re-printing articles from The Spectator (especially when they are all available free on the Internet), and I wonder how many people care what Steve Vines or Andy Ho have to say.

Reprinting articles from Apple Daily and Next magazine strikes me as an excellent idea for those of us who don’t read Chinese, and the business section at the back offers a different perspective to that provided by the Standard and the SCMP.  I think they could a lot worse than re-positioning Spike as a serious magazine with some funny stuff in it.

Meanwhile, Dr Adams over at NTSCMP is showing his true colours.  His rather sad attempt to portray his website as serious and important (based on the fact that he managed to get under the skin of Jonathan Fenby when he was editor of the Post) and ‘dedicated to press freedom’ is completely undermined by the way that he responds to any news that is bad for his ‘enemies’.

Blogs banned in China – has to be good news, right, George?

Spike magazine in trouble – again that’s good news, apparently.  However, he tries to defend himself by saying that actually he wishes Spike no harm: 

I am not happy to see Spike go. I am however relieved to see Vines go as he did press freedom no service at all with his pusillanimous attitude (i.e. no balls), pretentiousness and overall incompetence. Ein grosser Aufwand schmaehlich ist vertan, as they say.

I suppose even George can figure out that it looks rather pathetic for someone who claims to be in favour of press freedom to rejoice over the possible closure of a magazine that made at least some attempt to provide serious coverage of what is happening in Hong Kong.  So he needs to have some justification for his attitude.  I’m surprised that he didn’t complain that Spike has a blue cover, or that it is published on Fridays, or that he doesn’t like the logo.  

No, apparently the reason is that Spike isn’t pure enough.  It lacks balls, it just isn’t upsetting enough people.  It really ought to carry more investigative journalism, such as NTSCMP’s revelation that some blogs are not very good, and hard-hitting jokes about, er, Nury Vittachi. 

George apparently still clings to the belief that satire is ‘important’.  Maybe this was true forty years ago, when newspapers were still deferential towards authority figures and politicians were treated with great respect, but surely not today.  These days ordinary people are much more cynical and so we don’t need so-called satirists on TV, in newspapers or magazines, or on the web, to remind us of the incompetence of our government. 

Sometimes humour is used in a fairly effective way to reach a mass audience, as with the “broom head” cartoon books that made fun of Regina Ip, but that’s the exception, and the reality is that satirical websites and magazines are read mainly by people who are already well-informed and probably very cynical.  If the jokes are funny we laugh, all the more so if they fit in with our pre-conceptions (for example that George Bush or Tung Chee-Hwa are stupid).  Does it change our view of the world?  Almost certainly not.  Does it make any real difference?  I doubt it.  So, really, who cares whether Spike is hard-hitting?  In the overall scheme of things, it just isn’t important.  Even if it was twice as hard-hitting and had ten times as many readers, it would still be irrelevant.  A few thousand gweilos chuckling away to themselves over their cafe latte on a Friday morning isn’t going to make much difference to what happens in Hong Kong.         

The irony here (which may be too obvious to point out) is that whilst Spike is less than perfect, NTSCMP is worse – a classic example of sheep in wolf’s clothing.  George ought to be honest and admit that it is just a personal website (it’s OK, no need to use the ‘b’ word) that he uses to pursue a vendetta against Steve Vines and Nury Vittachi, to indulge his passion for classical music, and to long for the days when the editor of the SCMP made him seem important.  As personal websites go, it’s not bad – some mildly amusing photo jokes (all totally original, of course), some interesting opinions, and the text of George’s book about how funny Hong Kong people are.  Nothing more earth-shattering than that.  “Hong Kong’s premier independent publication and [..] committed to press freedom?”  Now that is funny.