About Apple Daily

Apple Daily

Apple Daily was a Hong Kong traditional Chinese tabloid newspaper founded by Jimmy Lai on 20 June 1995 and owned by Next Digital, the company also known through its earlier name Next Media. It ceased publication on 24 June 2021. In its twenty-six years of publication it was one of Hong Kong's best-selling Chinese-language newspapers, a paper credited with introducing tabloid journalism to Hong Kong, and the city's only mass-circulation newspaper whose editorial position was variously described as pro-democracy, anti-government or anti-China. Its headquarters were at 8 Chun Ying Street, Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate West, Tseung Kwan O. It had a print circulation of about 86,000 in 2021, and it printed one million copies of its final edition. Its closure followed raids on its offices, arrests of its founder and executives, and the freezing of company assets under the Hong Kong national security law.

Founding by Jimmy Lai on 20 June 1995

Apple Daily was founded on 20 June 1995 by garment businessman Jimmy Lai. After the success of Next Magazine, another publication owned by Lai, he launched Apple Daily with initial capital recorded as HK$700 thousand in one reference account of its founding figures. Lai, a Catholic, named Apple Daily after the forbidden fruit, saying that if Adam and Eve had not eaten it, there would have been no evil and no news. With the launch in 1995, Lai used "An apple a day keeps the lies away" as the commercial slogan. The paper's inaugural editorial, headlined in accounts of its history as a statement that it belonged to Hong Kong, set out a mission to publish a newspaper for Hong Kong people. Lai had turned to publishing after building a fortune in the fashion industry, launching Next Magazine in 1990 before founding Apple Daily five years later. The 1989 Tiananmen crackdown was described in retrospective accounts as a turning point in his life, and the new paper's commitment to covering politically sensitive issues was evident from the outset.

A Launch That Reached 200,000 Copies on Its First Day

The newspaper was launched against a poor economy and a competitive Chinese-language newspaper market, and political uncertainties arising from Lai's criticisms of the Chinese government made media analysts pessimistic about its future. Its launch was teased by television advertisements in which Lai was portrayed with an apple on his head, as a shooting target for competitors. In the first month of publication the newspaper gave out coupons that effectively reduced the cover price to HK$2, despite a standardised retail price of HK$5 per issue set by the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong. The price was restored to $5 after a month, but the paper switched to promotion with T-shirts and coloured posters. The campaign boosted Apple Daily to 200,000 copies on its first day, making it the newspaper with the second-highest circulation in Hong Kong at launch — an extraordinary entry for a new title in an already crowded market.

The 1995 Price War with Oriental Daily

A price war ensued between popular newspapers in response to Apple Daily's entry into the market. Oriental Daily News, its main rival, dropped its price to $2 from $5 per issue in December 1995. Other newspapers, such as Sing Pao and Tin Tin Daily, followed suit. Apple Daily reduced its retail price to $4 one day after Oriental Daily announced a 10 per cent drop in its circulation. The war reshaped the market by destroying weaker titles: TV Daily ceased operations on the first day of the price war, and Hong Kong United Daily, China Times magazine and the English-language Eastern Express, a sister newspaper of Oriental Daily, collapsed soon afterwards. Reference accounts of Oriental Daily likewise record that several newspapers closed during and after the war because of persistent losses. Apple Daily survived the war it had triggered and settled into its position as one of the two dominant popular Chinese-language dailies in Hong Kong, locked in long rivalry with Oriental Daily.

Introducing Tabloid Journalism to Hong Kong

Apple Daily was known for introducing tabloid journalism to Hong Kong. The newspaper was modelled after USA Today, with printing in full colour and concise writing. It made extensive use of written Cantonese, when most Hong Kong newspapers used written vernacular Chinese, and it focused on reporting crime, celebrity news, eroticism, gambling and drug use. It carried at least three pages of entertainment news at the beginning, a total increased to eight pages by 2000. Its focus on large, colourful graphics and more sensationalist stories, such as celebrity scandals, traffic accidents and deaths, quickly made it Hong Kong's second most popular newspaper, and this type of journalism was replicated by other newspapers in Hong Kong. Journalism scholar Paul Lee said the establishment of Apple Daily changed the Hong Kong newspaper ecosystem by transforming broadsheet newspapers into tabloids, and noted that high-circulation papers such as Apple Daily, The Sun and Oriental Daily were known for tabloid journalism as well as mainstream reporting. Although published in broadsheet format, Apple Daily was therefore a tabloid in style and method.

Editorial Position: Pro-Democracy and Critical of Government

Apple Daily favoured the Hong Kong pro-democracy camp. Its criticism of the Hong Kong government was described by some scholars as a marketing strategy as well as a political position, and it was said to have sensationalised politics and produced public dissent. In 2003 it was critical of the second Tung Chee-hwa administration and encouraged readers to participate in pro-democracy demonstrations with its front-page headline. It launched a social media campaign in support of students in the 2014 Hong Kong protests, and its social media presence was considered a mainstream pro-activist community. Critical of the Chinese government, it was described as the only newspaper in Hong Kong that expressed optimism when Chen Shui-bian was re-elected President of the Republic of China in 2004. Every year it marked the anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown with prominent front-page coverage of Hong Kong's candlelight vigil in Victoria Park; its final such front page appeared in 2021. In a survey by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Apple Daily was the third most trusted paid newspaper in 2019, and in a 2021 Reuters Institute poll it ranked fourth offline and second online among the most-used news sources in Hong Kong.

Reporting, Exclusives and Controversies

Apple Daily was known for coverage of breaking news and current affairs in Hong Kong and China, and it had exclusive reports on political scandals, including a member of the Legislative Council not reporting a conflict of interest in 2000, and former Financial Secretary Antony Leung avoiding tax when purchasing a car. In 2019 it was an award winner at the Hong Kong Human Rights Press Awards for reporting on Liu Xia, the wife of Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo. Its history also included serious controversies. It attracted public criticism in 1998 for a report about a woman who had jumped from a building after pushing her children from a window, after it was revealed the paper had paid the woman's husband to pose for a photograph with two prostitutes, for which it issued an apology after a public outcry. In the same year it was ordered by a court to pay a lawyer more than HK$3.6 million in damages for defamation over a front-page article. In 2000 an Apple Daily reporter was sentenced to ten months in jail for bribing police officers for information on criminal cases. A complete profile has to record both sides: a paper capable of agenda-setting exclusives and award-winning human-rights reporting, and a paper whose methods were repeatedly challenged in public and in court.

Pressure, Boycotts and Cyberattacks

The editorial position against the Hong Kong and Chinese governments resulted in advertising boycotts. In 2003 several major property developers in Hong Kong ended their advertisements in the newspaper. According to Mark Simon, an executive of Next Digital, HSBC, Hang Seng and Standard Chartered stopped advertising in the newspaper in 2013 due to pressure from the Chinese government's Liaison Office; the Liaison Office denied it had contacted the banks, and the banks said they had pulled advertising for commercial reasons. Apple Daily also said Chinese-sponsored hackers had attacked it almost every week, and FireEye said in 2014 that denial-of-service attacks on Apple Daily were professional cyberattacks that may have been coordinated by the Chinese government. In March 2015 Chan Pui-man became the first female chief editor of the paper, replacing Ip Yut-kin. In 2020 Apple Daily launched the English edition of its digital newspaper, an English-language online edition that extended its reach beyond Chinese-language readers in its final year.

Circulation, Digital Reach and the Taiwan Sister Paper

According to the most recent filings before its closure, Apple Daily had a print circulation of over 86,000, and its website had approximately 9.6 million monthly unique visitors in Hong Kong. Contemporary accounts at closure put its usual daily print run at about 80,000 copies, close to the 86,000 circulation figure. Those late figures were far below its launch-era strength, when it sold 200,000 copies on its first day and became Hong Kong's second most popular newspaper, but its digital reach remained large: one account of its closure noted more than 3.8 million registered web users, and the Reuters Institute ranking placed it second online among Hong Kong news sources in 2021. In 2003 Lai had founded a sister publication of the same name in Taiwan. The Hong Kong paper's influence therefore extended beyond a single print edition: it was a print title, a major news website, a social-media presence, and the Hong Kong flagship of a publishing idea that had also been transplanted to Taiwan.

The National Security Law Raids of 2020 and 2021

The Hong Kong national security law was enacted on 30 June 2020. The offices of Apple Daily were raided by over 200 national security officers on 10 August 2020, following the arrest of Lai the previous day for violations of the recently implemented law; Lai's two sons, four senior executives of Next Digital and three social activists were also arrested that day. The raid lasted nine hours, officers carted off 25 boxes of documents, and Apple reporters livestreamed it. Lai was arrested in December 2020 and sentenced to jail in April 2021 in relation to the 2019–2020 protests. On 17 June 2021 a much larger operation followed: about 500 police officers raided the headquarters, and five people including editor Ryan Law and chief executive Cheung Kim-hung were arrested. The assets of three companies — Apple Daily Limited, Apple Daily Printing Limited and AD Internet Limited — and accounts belonging to Lai worth more than HK$500 million had already been frozen on 14 May 2021 in one reference chronology, and reporting at closure recorded HK$18 million in assets of companies linked to the paper frozen in June. With its accounts frozen, the paper no longer had money to pay staff and run daily operations.

The Final Edition: One Million Copies on 24 June 2021

Apple Daily announced its closure on 23 June 2021. Its final issue was published on 24 June 2021, with over one million copies printed, up from the usual 80,000. By 8:30 a.m. the final edition had sold out across most of the city's newsstands. People lined up early across Hong Kong to buy it; in the Mong Kok neighbourhood residents began lining up hours before the paper hit the stands, and on the previous night more than 100 people stood outside the paper's office building in the rain to show support as employees produced the final edition. Thursday's edition carried an image of an Apple Daily employee in the office waving at supporters surrounding the building, with a headline about Hongkongers bidding a painful farewell in the rain. Associate publisher Chan Pui-man, one of the five arrested the previous week, told gathered staff, "You've done a great job, everyone!" The newspaper's website and app content ceased to be accessible at 23:59 on 23 June 2021, and its YouTube channels were shut down at midnight on the day of the final issue. Thomas Kellogg of the Georgetown Center for Asian Law called the closure a dark day for press freedom in Hong Kong, and Britain's foreign secretary at the time described the forced closure as a chilling demonstration of a campaign to silence opposition voices.

Legacy of a Closed Newspaper

Apple Daily's legacy is inseparable from the manner of its ending, but it is wider than its final week. For twenty-six years it was a central institution of Hong Kong popular culture and politics: the paper that brought full-colour, Cantonese-rich, sensational tabloid methods into the Hong Kong mainstream, forced a market-wide price war in 1995, reached 200,000 copies on its first day, won human-rights press awards, and sustained an openly pro-democracy editorial line under advertising boycotts and cyberattacks. It was also a controversial paper, apologising for a staged photograph, paying substantial defamation damages, and seeing a reporter jailed for bribery. After its closure, Stand News and Citizen News, two other pro-democracy outlets, also closed as 2022 began. Apple Daily was prominently featured in the 2022 film The Hong Konger, which showcased its final days. It exists now only as a historical title — published from 1995 to 2021, closed, and remembered through its final, million-copy farewell edition.