Far Eastern Economic Review Dies in Current Form
From dtsang@lib.uci.edu Tue Nov 2 07:20:44 2004
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 07:19:24 -0800 (PST)
From: Dan Tsang <dtsang@lib.uci.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Far Eastern Economic Review dies in current form
So sad. Here's an email from the publication about its move to Beijing from HK and becoming 10 issues a year instead of a weekly. News reports also say it is getting rid of its reporters and editorial staffers and relying on freelancers and policy makers for content in future.
As a freelancer who wrote once, while a graduate student, for FEER (on declassified US national security council docs on Hong Kong at end of WWII), I mourn its passing. It won't be the same kind of magazine any more.
No word on whether the FEER Yearbook ( Asia 200_ etc.) will continue.
dan
Daniel C. Tsang
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 11:37:22 +0800
From: Far Eastern Economic Review <hrpc010@attglobal.net>
To: dtsang@uci.edu
Subject: Important Announcement
Dear feer.com E-newsletter Subscriber,
As you may know, we are changing the Far Eastern Economic Review to make it even more relevant to its readers and to the public policy debate in Asia. The e-newsletter we sent last week was the last one you'll receive in this format and frequency. Starting from December, the new REVIEW will be a monthly magazine dedicated to providing readers like you with ideas, opinions and perspectives that are essential to understanding Asia. We will email you additional information at that time.
In many ways, the REVIEW is returning to its roots. Its founder first started editing a predecessor to the REVIEW in Shanghai, before moving to Hong Kong in 1946. The new REVIEW will be edited in Beijing. Now, as then, it will publish the most insightful and influential articles on Asia's future, written by those who are now shaping it.
The new REVIEW will continue to provide the information and insights, the "early warnings" that can help you understand the trends and dynamics of a rapidly changing Asia, and how you could benefit from them. I'm confident you will find the new REVIEW an invaluable publication. An annual subscription to the new REVIEW will cost only US$100 for 10 issues.
Please also click here for a letter from Hugo Restall, the new Editor of the REVIEW, which explains its new mission in further detail.
We thank you for your past and future support of the Far Eastern Economic Review.
Yours sincerely,
Christopher J. Graves
Managing Director
From sophie_qj@yahoo.com Tue Nov 2 12:22:37 2004
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 12:21:11 -0800 (PST)
From: sophie qj <sophie_qj@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Far Eastern Economic Review dies in current form
I would like to add my regrets to Dan's on the passing of FEER. In recent years it has been a shadow of its old self, but there was a time in the 1970s and 80s when it was the Bible of Southeast Asia watchers. Its correspondents were not parachute journalists, even though they could not always reside in the countries they covered. They often spoke the language of the country they covered and spent years cultivating serious sources, to provide political-economic coverage that you couldn't find anywhere else. And still can't.
Which brings me to the 'small is beautiful' discussion. I agree with Mike that debates on small-scale and family economic enterprise have been an ongoing feature of Vietnamese economic and political life. But if you read Adam Fforde or back issues of FEER for the early 1980s, you will find that the role of family-level enterprise was affirmed by the Fifth Congress in 1982. There was a lot of ferment and debate about these issues within Vietnam in the years from 1979 to 1986, and a fine-grained history of the period would have to take this into account.
Sophie Quinn-Judge
From DRA1333@aol.com Wed Nov 3 15:07:03 2004
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 18:05:35 EST
From: DRA1333@aol.com
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Far Eastern Economic Review dies in current form
Over the years, less so in the last few years, The Far Eastern Economic Review has been a special (and often the only) source of in-depth news reporting on Vietnam. It will be missed. A warm appreciation was published in this morning's New York Times by Helene Cooper:
For someone who grew up dreaming about swashbuckling journalists reporting from far-flung places, there was no greater model than The Far Eastern Economic Review, a weekly founded in Shanghai in 1946 and put out by a raffish staff of adventurers.
To me, the review's reporters embodied what journalism was about. There was Bertil Lintner, the Swedish buccaneer who spent a year walking along the Chinese-Burma border during the 1980's with his wife. Their baby was born along the way, and Mr. Lintner continued to file mammoth articles that gave voice to a culture nobody would pay anyone to cover. There was John MacBeth, the New Zealander who kept reporting from East Timor to Jakarta even after his leg was amputated, battling the Indonesian strongman Suharto. There was Nayan Chanda, the Bengali from Calcutta, among the last reporters left in Saigon when North Vietnamese tanks invaded the city. Mr. Chanda was filing his article as Communist tanks were crashing through the city gates. He kept working until two Communists walked up to him and literally pulled the plug of the telex machine.
And then there was Nate Thayer. My hero. During the 1980's and 90's, the mercurial Mr. Thayer hung out with the Cambodian resistance, dodging Khmer bullets in the jungles around Angkor Wat, fleeing Vietnamese troops across the Thai border and even at one point inadvertently running over a land mine, which exploded and destroyed his pickup truck. In 1997, he finally got the reward he had been seeking: Khmer commanders took him deep into the jungle, where he found Pol Pot.
Last week, Dow Jones, publisher of The Far Eastern Economic Review, announced it was shutting it down and laying off 80 people. The current Nov. 4 issue will be the last of its kind; while Dow Jones is keeping the brand name alive, FEER will be a monthly with essays from academics and government officials: not a Nate Thayer in the bunch.
Four years ago, on my way home from Beijing, I met the FEER reporter Murray Hiebert on the plane. He was fresh out of a Kuala Lumpur prison, where he had just spent a month for reporting about a Malaysian judge's wife who had sued an international school for kicking her son off the debate team. I was star-struck; here was oneof my heroes in the flesh, still battle-scarred. Murray was bashful. "I think most journalists should go to jail for a month," he said later. "You have no idea how much you respect press freedom after that."