Post hoc

6 April 2016 By Peter Thal Larsen Follow @Peter_TL

The e-commerce group is bucking convention by dismantling the paywall at its recently acquired South China Morning Post. That should win the Hong Kong paper some new readers. But free web content faces mounting challenges. Investors will finance Chairman Jack Ma’s gamble.

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The South China Morning Post said on April 5 it had taken down its online paywall. The move followed the completion of the acquisition of the 113-year-old newspaper by Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba.

”Our focus now should not be on finding the right media business model. Our priority should be on how we should change to better adapt to the reading habits of our readers,” Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma told the newspaper.

Tammy Tam, the SCMP’s editor-in-chief, said the move paved the way for the paper to expand its global readership.

SCMP Group, the newspaper’s Hong Kong-listed owner, said on Feb. 19 that it had agreed to sell its publishing businesses to Alibaba for at least HK$2.06 billion ($265 million) in cash.

In the ten months to October 2015, the businesses generated net income of HK$44.5 million on revenue of HK$874 million. In the same period of 2014, net income was HK$95.8 million and revenue was HK$974 million.

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