----T---
MEDIAi PU BLI,SHI'NG
TRAVEL
By Nury Vittachi
Frequent changes where stability once ruled
Close encounters with the wild kind Some FCC members took a trip to India at Christmas, came back and tossed their tiger pictures nonchalantly across the main bar...
Faces at the top at the SCMP have changed abruptly and in quick succession" And FCC member Clarence Chang has moved in as managing director. N a brief report tucked away in
an
inside page, the South China Morning
Post announced last month that the
wider range of activities tha¡ is usual even for a quick-thinking a¡rd capable Shanghaiborn graduate.
"My introduction to journalism came when a job to support myseH for my
board of directors had accepted the resignation of the man at the helm, Managing Dire-
I had to find
ctor Tori Lennon. Cwiously enough, the report said nothing about Lennon's reason for moving over. Only a few months ago
last two years at college," says Chang, who studied history, geography and Englishliterature at Hong Kong's Chinese University."
Editor Alan Farrelly had left the scene equally abruptþ. The predecessors of Lennon and Farrelly, former managing director Jerry Pilgrim a¡d former editor Robin
I worked as duty editor for AFP from midnight to eight in the morning; then I would go and spend the daytime in college. It was two years of good solid training."
Hutcheon, had both
F you have been hearing the
-
Chinese and three in English." During the turbulent 1960s, he covered
news production and programming, evenfually becoming controller of programming. He was at Rediffusion when it switched, in 1973, from being a wire station to a wireless st¿tion - a true broadcast service. In 1975 he moved to TVB, starting with news and then moving on to specialise in sporls
and cover the World Cup and the Olympics. Ten years later, Chang
In an
for
unexplained
changes have become, naturally,
subject
of
international Chang's
It is also said
witness in the Year of the Dragon. But how
a
nevrsman
turned media executive, has no pretensions about the link between journalism and business. He did not enter the profession, he says, with illusions of saving the world with his pen. He simply wanted to earn enough cash to put himself through two years of college.
This pragmatic beginning has led him
onto a journalistic career that spans a far
Now in his late 40s with an unplaceable accent (in English at least), Chang has a history behind him which includes everything from working as a cameraman at Rediffusion (remember them?) in Hong Kong to life as a business development manager for Mwdoch's News Ltd., in Australia. HUMBLE BEGINNING: Born in 1939 in Shanghai, his family brought him to Kowloon when he was 11. After graduation, he joined Rediffusion as a TV news reporter. In those days, says Chang, "the
the role then
is
Brian broke the habit of a lifetime by getting up at 5 a.m. fow mornings in a row at the Kipling Camp at Kanha. The predawn rise enabled tracking of tiger pug marks in Kanha - we saw our first tiger on Cñristmas day. F0UR LI\TTIGERSI: Sunrise
was spectacular
but the mornings were freezing. However, the tots of rum in the coffeebythe campfire helped some. We saw a total of four tigers (or was it six?) during our stay at Kanha. The beauty of the beasts has now turned us into ardent naturalists/conservationists/ protectors of tigers and all creatures great and small.
beyond, to Europe and the USA Step aboard and be treated like.
called
"Colonial Secretary". Although he married a Hong Kong girl, the famous Cantonese film star, Josephine Siao, Chang's family is still in Australia. His wife and two children Kai-chin, 7, and Yachin, 3, will join him at Lunar New Year. At the moment he is rushed off his feet immersing himself in the workings of the
Post, ard
c'-r.,.',isFtr
Air-lndia cân fly you to lndia and
scene. He remembers Sir David Ford back in the'60s, and the colourful characters who filled
Clarence Chang: "Very happy to be back in Hong Kong."
NO PRETENSIONS: Chang,
1988
favourite
days on the TV beat were the opportunities he had to meet major figwes on the political
does Chang feel about his sudden ascent to this position in these unsettling days?
8 r'BsnuARy
deve-
memories of his earþ
will
NI
There clre st¡ll q few unspo¡lr ploces on eqrth.
lopment.
that the appointment of Clarence Chang as the new managing director is the beginning, rather than the end, of highlevel changes that Tong
Chong Street
experiences.
general manager for
itis
widely believed that the two changes are not
linked.
Kanha Wildlife Park. Peggy Craig (who organised the trip for us and 12 others) hadwarnedthatas Gandhi was "Number One on the Sikh hit list", he could be at any number of places. Gandhi may have mined other people's plans by going elsewhere but we went on to have a reaþ good time and some interesting
of the Posf, he was
curiosity
and speculation. But
Gandhi was also going tiger tracking at the
joined Murdoch's News Ltd., working for Network 10 - the TV arm of the group. Until his recent call to the managing directorship
organisation such long service and stability at the top, the recent
a
Tourist Association, formed a gang of four and hitched on to a "tigers and temples" tour in central India. There was a mmour going round in Madhya Pradesh that
the Hong Kong riots of '66 and '67 nd byphoon disasters before heading from
held their top jobs at the
words
"Oh, no! Please! Not another pile of tiger picfures!" round the main bar recentþ, here's how it all began,,. India's prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, th¡eatened to spoil Christmas for Brian Jeffries, Penny Byrne and me, who, together with Betty Fu of the Hong Kong
news team was one reporter and one editor. three in We had to do six bulletins a day
Po$ for almost 15 and 20 years respectively.
known
By Mary Lee
understandably reticent to
comment on what changes he plans to make at such an earþ stage. But there's one tlring of which he is quite sure. "I'm very happy to be back in Hong Kong," he says.
a Maharajah, From Tokyo, Osaka,
I t
Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney
.,9k
-€\) Ì"u-
^atR-tnDtA
The airline rhat treats you like a Maharajah.
THE coRRESpoNDENT FEBRUARY 19BB THE CORRESPONDENT 9