South China Morning Post clamps down on spoofing

Dot dour

Asia Sentinel reports:

South China Morning Post Editor Mark Clifford fired staff members for producing an in-house spoof. “It’s not something that you would show to your mother,” he complained. Now newspaper staffers have taken their case against Clifford to the owners.

In an unprecedented action, an estimated 80-plus newsroom staffers – male, female, Chinese and western alike – have signed what amounts to a no-confidence vote in Mark Clifford, the editor-in-chief of Hong Kong’s largest English language newspaper, after he fired two senior editors for their small roles in a mock front page farewell gift for another editor whom Clifford had fired.

The incident, which began as a traditional office ritual for a departing employee, has uncovered a sharp divide in the newsroom of one of Asia’s oldest newspapers, essentially pitting a new chief editor against many of the paper’s long-time employees.

“Leaving pages” as British-oriented journalists call them, are a tradition in western journalism across the globe, typically a gentle satiric poke full of inside jokes delivered at the exiting employee’s expense during a farewell office party.

If Clifford loses his job at the SCMP, perhaps SARFT will offer him a job heading up an anti-online-spoof task force. There's always room for another hack with no sense of humor in China's media regulatory bodies.