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FEER folds at 58, format to change

The Hong Kong-based weekly news magazine Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) is to fold in its current form with the loss of 80 jobs, the magazine's publisher Dow Jones said yesterday.

The Review, which led debate on Asian issues for 58 years, will be relaunched as an opinion-led monthly, Dow Jones -- publishers of the Asian Wall Street Journal -- said in a statement.

The articles will be largely written by Asian opinion leaders from the fields of politics, business and academia, it said.

The job losses represent 10 per-cent of Dow Jones' workforce in Asia and one-third of those were editorial positions. The company said some staff will be transferred to other publications.

"We will try whatever we can to provide our staff opportunities, but we regret that we won't be able to retain all of our staff," a company spokeswoman said.

A company source said staff were told the news yesterday in a specially convened meeting at a hotel in Hong Kong. Senior Dow Jones management from New York were said to be present.

The first issue of the Review in its new format, which will be subscription rather than advertising driven, will appear in December.

"The format change will mark the start of a new chapter in the Review's 58-year history, even as we devote more of our collective focus, efforts and resources to ... the Asian Wall Street Journal as the Dow Jones flagship in Asia, and as an integral component of the global Wall Street Journal franchise," Dow Jones chairman and chief executive Peter Kann said in a statement.

Kann blamed poor advertising sales for the weekly's demise and said that the magazine had been losing money for the past six years. The weekly ended with a circulation of more than 90,000.

Nearly all other advertising-dependent newsweeklies in Asia had already succumbed to competition from "more immediate media alternatives," Kann said.

The company spokeswoman said the "era of regional news-weeklies has come to an end."

"On advertising, the picture has become more difficult for the review; we see no likelihood of a turnaround in [the] current economic model," she said.

The move leaves Asia without a major English-language newsweekly after the closure of Asiaweek in November 2001.
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