Media jobs in HK

[Dunc]

Can anyone provide advice as to how to break into Hong Kong's newspaperr industry?

I am trying to break into reporting in the UK. My long term plan is to move to HK within the next five years, wondered if anyone could provide any advice on achieving this.

[Lammarite]

Bring a few monkeys and a typewriter and you should be on par with the SCMP standard.
They just buy stories off the wires, most of which are China related since their 're-design' whom I suspect has a penchant for the Conrad logo.

[PDLM]

Do you speak Cantonese and Mandarin? If not then a lot of the local newspaper scene is going to be off-limits to you. Perhaps a specialisation in financial areas (or possibly technology) would open one or two doors in areas where English is more widely used.

[goodkarma]

Dunc you don't give us much info.

There are far more opps in the magazine trade here than newspapers. The two newspapers we do have, SCMP and The Standard do of course hire non Chinese.

Magazines like HK Magazine, the most read here by English speakers would most likely only offer someone with little experience an interns job but lots of people who have worked there have moved up to bigger and better things.

There are several business mags here and accounting magazines that are all in English. There are magazines like Home Journal that are bi lingual.

So, more info please.

[Dunc]

Thanx for the responses.

goodkarm, at present I'm trying to find a traineeship at one of the newspapers in my local area (South-East Scotland). This would be a two-year affair where I would be a general assignment journalist, covering court sessions, local council meetings, silver weddings, local festivals, rugby matches and the like. I'd sit the National Certificate Examinations at the end of this, confirming my satus as a journo.

After that I want to move into specialised business journalism. I'm particularly interested in the energy and transport sectors. Alternatively, I have been an F1 fan since I was about seven, have an encyclopedic knowledge of the sport and if the chance came up to write about F1 I would probably take it. This kind of career move though would neccessitate moving though, which is where Hong Kong comes in.

To get a job reporting on the above I would have to write for The Scotsman in Edinburgh or a London newspaper. I dislike Edinburgh as a city and positively loathe London, so neither of these are particularly appealing places of work for me. I lived in Nanjing for a year after university, liked it enormously and decided that I would like to build my career in China. HK seems to be the ideal place as it has a well-established English media.

I understand that I will need to grit my teeth and work in London or Embra for a couple of years before I would realisically get anywhere in HK.

I hope this is the exposition you were looking for goodkarma.

One further question, do the SCMP, Standard, etc prefer their staff to already be in HK before they are hired?