News Media under the Financial turmoil: Less and More
Hong Kong – April 19 – IJS-Global – It’s 4:00 in the morning, and is still dark outside. The alarm clock began to ring, and it’s time for Kandy to go to work.
Usually it is not necessary for an intern student to go to work that early, but under the pressure of the financial turmoil, active attitude maybe equals to “a job”, which is very precious for a fresh graduate in the coming May, like Kandy.
Kandy Wong, an undergraduate student from Chinese University of Hong Kong, is now having her internship in a local TV station. There are ten more other students who are having internships there, and all hope to get a job there.
“I’ve spent 4 years in Hong Kong, and hope that I can get a job soon, for I will become a permanent resident of Hong Kong when I spend 7 years here. It’s only 3 years left.”
Kandy Wong
For students like Kandy, the willing of getting a job is built on the willing of becoming a permanent resident; whereas people like Susie are only hoping to have a job.
“All I want is a stable job, but for a person working in the news media, it is a luxury fantasy,” Susie said, “all the news media are layoff the staff, I’m afraid of being cut off in the near future.”
Susie Lam, a fresh staff in a local newspaper, who has work there for a year, is now afraid of getting fired.
Susie Lam
What Susie described is a live picture of the news media in Hong Kong now, all the newspapers and TV stations are thinking ways of cut down expenses under the hard pressure of the financial turmoil, layoff the staff becomes one of the popular way; besides, is the cut on the new positions for those fresh personnel.
The situation is far worse than bad.
The financial turmoil made all the news media trap in the difficulty of lacking advertisement, which directly caused the lack of financial resources. The shrink of the advertisement market will let the weaker news media out of the competition, which means a further shrink of the job market.
According to the research of CTR, 9 main industries are the most important advertising resources of the news media, including commercial, cosmetics, food, drink, medicine, real estate, entertainment, car and communication. Under the shrinking economic environment, the companies will cut the input in the advertisement, at the mean time, increase the standard of the advertising effect. Using the running pressure of the news media, some companies may even cut down the advertising price in further step.
“I don’t really want to work here, but this is my best choice till now,” Kandy said, “This station is the only one that promised no layoff in the difficult time. I hope it will provide some new positions, thus I’ll have the opportunity to work here.”
Broadcasting to the mainland China and other 150 countries and areas with Chinese people there, the TV station which Kandy worked for is one of a few news media in Hong Kong which doesn’t beat hard by the financial turmoil. According to the TV’s report, the business performance kept a stable increase in 2008; the whole classified broadcasting earning has increased 18.6% compare with 2007 under the pressure of the shrinking advertising market.
But still, the work availability is fewer than less.
“Under the pressure of the financial crisis, it’s need great courage for us to say that we will not lay off staff, but the problem is, the hard situation will last for a period of time, and surely we will affect by it,” Amy Lee, a human resource manager of the station said, “the opportunity for those intern students to stay is very less.”
Even though the station has a stable increase in profit, the financial turmoil is urging them to cut down the unnecessary further employment, including recruit new employees.
“I have to say that we have enough employees to run the whole company, and have no plan to add more positions, especially for those fresh men in society,” Amy said, “but maybe, we will receive one or two of the intern students, if they are really have an outstanding performances.”
The situations are the same in the whole news media industry, less advertisement, more professional graduates, makes the whole industry facing a difficult period of transforming, especially those weaker ones in the industry.
Singpao, which used to be a main newspaper in Hong Kong, plan to cut down salary under the pressure of the financial crisis. When answering the inquiry, it’s executive officer Yu Huaiying said that the advertising profit of the news paper have the possibility decreasing 15%, and cut down salary is a way of helping the newspaper pass through the difficulties. But some employees said that the salary cut down may affect on their passion of working for the newspaper, for their salary is much lower than other newspapers’.
After all, money is the essential for the news media to survive, advance and transform. Hong Kong’s 2009-2010 budgets show a great deal of will to help out all the industries. it’s need time to see whether the news media is among them or not. But what obvious is, the news media industry do need a transformation under the chaos of financial turmoil.
Weak news media like Singpao will have a painful transformation in the process, as well as the whole news media industry.
“Even though the situation is not that well, I believe that finally I can find a job here,” said Kandy, with fully hope of the future.
“It will surely become better, as a saying of Shelley: If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” When asking whether the news media industry will recover soon or not, Amy answered so.
