From the dark days of the Cultural Revolution emerged Robin Hutcheon, who would see the Post through two decades of remarkable growth and technological advance
Robin Hutcheon edited the South China Morning Post through a fifth of its history. The years of his term as editor, 1967 to 1986, were some of the paper's most rewarding and memorable, studded with epochal events. They began amid the tension of the Cultural Revolution and ran through to Hong Kong's rise as an international financial centre.
These were times of huge change for the editor to manage. He presided over the move from the old granite edifice in Wyndham Street to a sugar factory down a side lane in remote Quarry Bay. And he supervised revolutionary advances in production, shepherding staff from the era of 'hot lead' typesetting, which it had used since inception, into the computer age.
Vastly respected by a wide cross-section of the community, Hutcheon was guided in his journalism by a strong commitment to honesty and fair play. In an era when many newsmen liked to consider themselves hard-knuckled cynics, he was a gentle man and a gentleman, guided by his lifelong Christian beliefs.
From his retirement home in Australia, aged 75, Hutcheon reminisced recently about his years at the helm.
'I loved the Post,' he says frankly. 'The staff felt very much part of the community. They had a great sense of contributing to and bolstering its image as a dynamic economic and social powerhouse. This was particularly in years when we were being assailed by overseas critics for using low-cost labour.'