Mark Clifford

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Mark L. Clifford was the Editor-in-Chief of The Standard newspaper in Hong Kong from January 2004 to February 2006, and the Editor-in-Chief the South China Morning Post, its larger rival, from February 3, 2006 to April 1, 2007. He left to join the Asia Business Council, as its Executive Director.^[1]

1 Biography
- 1.1 The Standard
- 1.2 South China Morning Post
2 Publications
- 2.1 Co-author
- 2.2 Author
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Biography

An American by nationality, Clifford is an alumnus of the University of California at Berkeley, and also attended Simon's Rock College of Bard for one year^{[citation needed]}.

Clifford's career began in 1987 in Seoul at the Far Eastern Economic Review. He held a number of positions with that magazine, including Business Editor, before leaving to join BusinessWeek in 1995 as Hong Kong Bureau Chief, and later as Asia Regional Editor. From January 2004 until his appointment to head the SCMP, Clifford served as Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of The Standard, a rival Hong Kong English-language daily newspaper. He joined the South China Morning Post in February 2006 on a 2 year contract.^[2]

[edit] The Standard

Despite his obvious successes in improving the Standard,^[3] Clifford's tactics and management style were quite unpopular there by some accounts. He dismissed the Standard’s managing editor and executive editor on the day he announced his departure.^[4]

[edit] South China Morning Post

The offending (sic) spoof

Clifford generated controversy early in his tenure at the South China Morning Post after a November 2006 incident in which he summarily dismissed Ruffini and Willison, two SCMP copy-editors, for what he believed to be a vulgar joke: The two editors had apparently minor roles in the creation of a "leaving page", or a spoof front page of a newspaper containing inside jokes traditionally given [in most newspapers in the world] to departing colleagues and not intended for public circulation. In this case, the page was intended as a gift to Niall Fraser, an editor Clifford had recently dismissed, and was headlined “You’re a c**t, but you’re a good c**t” (written with the asterisks intact). Following the dismissals, he sent the following email message to all his staff:^[5]

"If we at the South China Morning Post are to keep society's trust, to keep our reader's belief in our quality and integrity, we must ensure that what we do meets those expectations. We must strive for excellence in everything we do in our professional lives, both inside and outside of the news room every phone call, every photo, every press conference and, yes, everything we do internally."

In a racially united display of solidarity, over one hundred of the approximately 300 editorial staff signed a petition following the incident,^[6] which read as follows:^[7]

"we believe that the sacking of high quality journalists is against the interest of the South China Morning Post and that any involvement in the leaving page does not have anything to do with their work for the paper and is not a sackable offence. We believe that more harm has been done to the core values of the SCMP by their dismissal without reference to our established code of verbal or written misconduct warnings. We would like the chairman to know that the action today has severely damaged morale of the staff. We call for their immediate reinstatement.

Clifford was widely criticized by journalists worldwide for his handling of the incident.^[5]

There had already been some turmoil over the sacking in October of a junior photographer (since rehired) over a mis-captioned photograph, which provoked the eventual departure of Clifford's lieutenant and the paper's Business Editor, Stuart Jackson.^[7] In January 2007, further high-level departures were announced at the paper.^[8] This chain of events culminated in Clifford's departure before the expiration of his contract "to pursue other opportunities", which was announced on March 19, 2007.

The newspaper credited him for his "key role in changes that have both strengthened and improved editorial operations", and for being "the driving force behind the SCMP's forthcoming re-design",^[9] but denied his departure was due to the recent turbulence.^[10]

[edit] Publications

[edit] Co-author

China and the WTO: Changing China, Changing World Trade (ISBN 0470820616), 2002, with former World Trade Organization Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi.
Meltdown: Asia's Spectacular Boom and Devastating Bust (ISBN 0735201412) 1999