Korea Times, SCMP agree to boost ties
The Korea Times and the South China Morning Post (SCMP) have signed a memorandum of understanding to promote mutual cooperation including reporter exchanges and joint content production.
The signing ceremony took place at The Korea Times’ headquarters in central Seoul, Thursday, with Korea Times CEO Lee Byeong-eon, his SCMP counterpart Gary Liu and senior executives from both groups in attendance.
Under the MOU, the two English-language newspapers — representing South Korea and Hong Kong — will have a rotational exchange of reporters for a period set by the mutual agreement. The two companies will work together on joint reporting and the creation of content in the form of text, photos and video.
They also agreed to share their knowledge and information to better cope with the fast-changing media industry, and deepen their understanding of English news consumers.
“I hope the MOU will pave the way for the two newspapers to have exceptional cooperation on the management and content creation fronts, which will lead to synergies for both sides in many other areas,” Lee said.
Liu expressed his high expectations for the partnership, saying the agreement will let SCMP get a clearer picture of English news consumers in South Korea and its media market.
Liu, 36, a Taiwanese-American Harvard graduate from the tech industry, joined Hong Kong’s flagship English daily as chief executive in January 2017. He has since commanded SCMP’s fast-paced digital transformation.
“One of the main differences about our newsroom and many other newsrooms in transformation today is that we no longer have a separation between print and digital journalism,” Liu said.
“In fact, all of our journalists, every single one of them, work only for digital. And then there is a small group of only 20 people in the newsroom of 360 … only 20 people who every day come in and put together our newspaper.”
To facilitate this, he has made aggressive investments in hiring data analysts and setting up the related infrastructure to explore SCMP’s online users and their consumption habits, which he said presented the company with the ability to figure out “what people want and what people need.”
The ever-expanding database has contributed to a sharp increase in online revenue.
“We know our readers very, very well,” Liu said confidently.