Over 100 lose jobs as magazine goes monthly
More than 100 editorial staff on the weekly Cup Magazine lost their jobs yesterday after its editor announced it would relaunch as a monthly.
The lay-offs came less than two weeks after 80 staff were made redundant when one of Hong Kong's oldest English-language magazines, Asiaweek, folded.
Cup's chief editor, Lau Sai-leung, blamed a drop in advertising revenue sparked by the September 11 attacks.
'After the incident, the outlook for the entire publication industry has been dampened,' he said. 'We basically do not see any significant improvement in the immediate future, prompting us to consider the change.
'Advertising revenues for the first three months of the year are usually very poor, and when we added that to the terror attacks incident, we believe the situation can only get worse.'
Competition in the weekly magazine market also had become increasingly keen, he said.
Launched in May with more than 200 staff, Cup laid off about 80 staff in two earlier rounds of redundancies. Twenty staff would be left to launch the monthly publication next month.
Radio talk show host and South China Morning Post columnist Albert Cheng King-hon is a director of 36.com. which owns the magazine.
