About Hong Kong Newspapers

From sports, stock market, shopping and paparatzi entertainment, Hong Kong newspapers are the most common and popular media for local and international news. Choices galore. There are many Hong Kong newspaper companies and most international newspapers are also available. Newspapers in English, Chinese, and even Filipino. News competition is very tough. But the fact that Hong Kong is the finance and technology hub of Asia means that there are many businessmen and entrepreneurs from around the world who come to Hong Kong for months at a time. And so newspapers have to cater to them as well.

English Hong Kong Newspapers

• South China Morning Post - main English language newspaper; $7; considered by many as pro China
• The Standard - $6; more business focus

Hong Kong and International Newspapers (Asian Editions)

• Asian Wall Street Journal
• International Herald Tribune
• USA Today International

Chinese Hong Kong Newspapers

• Apple Daily
• Oriental Daily
• Ming Pao

There are newspaper stands in every busy corner. You can also get the daily copies at any 7-Eleven or Circle K convenience stores. News stands at the Star Ferry piers also have a good stock of overseas newspapers and magazines.

Big book stores like Page One and Bookazine also stock up on many international newspapers and magazines. However some papers may be a few days old.

If you just want to browse and avoid paying then the local public libraries will more than fill up your needs. No card needed, just walk in and select any of over 300 newspapers and 3,000 periodicals in stock. You can even ask for archives!

South China Morning Post

The most popular English newspaper by far is the South China Morning Post. Most profitable also. For job seekers, check out the Saturday edition which sometimes come in hundreds of pages. The Sunday edition, which is actually a separate company altogether, features shopping, travel, gossip, and more shopping.

Hong Kong Financial News

Of course there are newspapers that cater to the financial market. Among these the up to date the Hong Kong Economic Times is the best-selling financial newspaper. And based on independent surveys done by credible survey companies, Ming Pao and Economic Journal are the most trusted newspapers by the local readers.

Chinese Hong Kong newspapers

The Oriental Daily and The Sun are the most popular Chinese Hong Kong newspapers. How did The Sun and Oriental Daily become the leading newspapers in Hong Kong in terms of circulation? (By circulation here, I mean the average number of copies of a newspaper distributed on a day.) The fact is that both have a popular approach in the Hong Kong newspaper business.

Both newspapers use an informal style of news reporting, concentrate on celebrity gossip and paparazzi photography, and use to some degree many colloquial Cantonese phrases.

This popular style attracts a large section of the public, especially the younger market. The content of these parts are often extremely exaggerated or just plain fabricated so that they can claim that those news are indeed "exclusives".

Victims of these alleged falsehoods have tried to express their dissatisfaction through actions such as refusing interviews or even suing the reporters, but they have not stopped the papers' activities.

The number of Hong Kong newspapers competing in the market has been relatively stable for a long time. Of course, there are the occasional attempts at penetrating the market and establishing new types of newspaper and even theme-oriented papers, but almost all of these new entrants couldn't even compete with the main stream and trusted papers in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong newspapers usually have the fixed price around HKD 6 except South China Morning Post (HKD 7, while the Sunday edition cost HKD 8).

Metropolis Daily, Headline Daily, am730, and The Epoch Times are free papers, distributed at MTR and KCR stations. The Sun has reduced its price to HKD 3 from October 19, 2005 onwards, supposedly for the purpose of competing with the three free Hong Kong newspapers.