Far Eastern Economic Review - Criticism of Dow-Jones

Criticism of Dow-Jones

The magazine ceased publication in December, 2009 due to falling readership and advertising revenue. This was the reason given by its owner, Dow-Jones. But insiders cite other reasons. "Every ex-Review staffer knows that its days were numbered the day Dow Jones bought it. The Asian Wall Street Journal never enjoyed the kind of readership and readers' loyalty as that of the Review. And it wasn't a secret that the Americans wanted the AWSJ to supplant the Review." Philip Bowring pins the blame for the Review’s decline on Dow Jones. He says that its executives parachuted in from New York and wanted to homogenise the reporting. But according to Banyan, despite Dow Jones' missteps, FEER's business model was based on advertising revenue which foundered when prosperity declined.

'The decision to cease publication of the Review is a difficult one made after a careful study of the magazine's prospects in a challenging business climate,' said Todd Larsen, chief operating officer at Dow Jones Consumer Media Group. In 2004, Dow Jones fired most of FEER's reporters and transformed it into a monthly publication. Articles were largely commissioned and only a skeleton editorial staff was retained. David Plott, FEER's editor at the time, described the upheaval in 2004 as a loss of one of the 'greatest concentrations of knowledge and expertise about the region assembled anywhere'.

Dow Jones proclaimed the savings from the death of FEER will "catapult the company's growth in the burgeoning Asian marketplace." In response, J. Manthorpe commented, "As the FEER has been in a vegetative state since at least 2004 when it was made a monthly instead of weekly magazine and its staff was cut from 80 to five, only two of whom are journalists, it is hard to imagine the proceeds of closure catapulting anything anywhere."

‘Dow Jones’s marketing people didn’t know how to sell it as it competed with the Asian Wall Street Journal – they ignored it and killed it by sheer neglect,’ said VG Kulkarni, a former editor at the Review.

Prior to the formal closure in 2009, FEER died many deaths—in 1992 when Bowring was forced to resign as editor; in 2001 when it was merged with the Asian Wall Street Journal; in 2004 when it ceased as a weekly and was published as a monthly after being downsized to a staff of two. "The death of the Review came by a thousand cuts inflicted primarily by Karen House," said Bowring in 2004: A succession of failed makeovers and revolving editors; the dumbing-down of the magazine in an effort to make it "more readable"; moving away from hard-hitting, controversial coverage of corporate and financial scandals; a shift from in-depth coverage of business and politics to soft-centred features of the sort that appear in airline magazines.

"The final insult to the Review, and indeed to Asia, was Dow Jones' refusal to sell the title. It has had plenty of offers - which would benefit its own shareholders," says Bowring, "There is a parallel here between Time and Asiaweek. Time bought locally-born Asiaweek even though it appeared to be in direct competition for readers and advertising. Not so long afterwards, Time closed Asiaweek rather than its ailing Time Asia. It was corporate imperialism more than commercial sense which brought Dow Jones to buy control of the Review, which was a direct competitor for niche regional advertising. It is clear that the closure of the Review, as of Asiaweek, represents an attack on diversity and further reduction in the variety of print media."

"The magazine lost its way because people in New York thought they understood what the readers wanted more than those who were on the ground in Asia," wrote Bowring in the South China Morning Post. Bowring claims that Ms. House infused FEER's editorials with the right wing and furiously pro-western sentiments of The Wall Street Journal.

Under its previous editor, Derek Davies, the Review had carved a name for itself for the excellence of its economic reporting, its refusal to be cowed and its wide-ranging book reviews. When Dow Jones took over the Review it introduced pompous “editorials”, indulged in numerous revisions to the format, each more disastrous than the last; brought in large numbers of American journalists and editors at the expense of well-established writers who knew the region; moved the focus from business and politics to “innovation” and “lifestyle”, neither of which was of interest to its core readership; and dramatically reduced the scope of the book review section. When Dow Jones took control of the magazine, efforts to introduce more lifestyle features sparked protests from Review loyalists - as did its decision to make it into a monthly rather than a weekly title.

"I don't think Dow Jones ever understood what our culture was and they never really put in the effort to make the magazine succeed", said John McBeth who joined the magazine in 1979. Dow Jones turned it into a snappy, happy, trend-conscious delight for the Internet age. It was a failed effort "to lure readers who presumably don't care about thoughtful coverage of politics and economics but do want to know which wine goes with which chilli pepper". The reporting staffs of the Review and the Asian Wall Street Journal were merged in 2001. More significantly, at that time the ad sales staffs of the two publications were also merged. Two senior correspondents said they had frequently been asked by executives at Asian corporations they covered why the magazine's advertising staff were hard to reach and would often not return phone calls. "There was no effort put in," said one. "They didn't even try."

TJS George, co-founder of Asiaweek, says, "In due course, Time Inc. killed Asiaweek and Dow Jones (now a Murdoch property) killed the Review. Murdoch-Dow's Wall Street Journal and Time Inc.'s Time magazine now fly the American flag over Asia, unchallenged by lesser flags."