The Deathwatch for Apple Daily Has Begun

Apple Daily just marked its 26th anniversary on Sunday

The end of Apple Daily is nigh. 

It may come as early as Saturday if the newspaper's management is unable to persuade the Security Bureau to unfreeze its accounts in order to pay its staff.

One wonders how prepared founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying was for this possible scenario -- that three of Next Digital's companies would be caught in the national security law web, and the paper's editor in chief and publisher would be charged with colluding with foreign forces, like himself.

Lai with his newspaper when he started in 1995

Twenty-six years ago, Lai was a brash outsider who threw lots of money into creating a newspaper which shocked the media establishment. How could someone who made money selling T-shirts and jeans know how to run a newspaper?

He started off slashing the price of the paper so cheaply that one would be a fool not to buy it for a few days to see if they liked it or not. His newspaper war got him a lot of attention from critics and fans. 

The paper's colourful look was modeled after USA Today, and it was called Apple Daily as in the forbidden fruit in The Bible -- if Adam and Eve did not eat it, there would be no evil and news.

Soon the paper became known for its paparazzi coverage of celebrities, hiding in the bushes to get a shot of an actor or singer caught with their lover. Apple Daily was also an ambulance chaser, listening in on the police radio frequency to find out about car accidents and such and were usually the first on the scene to get gruesome photos.

The police raided the office again last week

Apple Daily was also a fierce critic of the government, and by extension China due to Lai's political leanings. In 2003 it encouraged people to go out to protest against Article 23 on the July 1 march, and in subsequent protests, such as the Umbrella Movement, and the against the extradition bill in 2019.

One of its popular supplementary publication was Eat and Travel Weekly. If it did a story on the best char siu in the city, it would collect 30 or 40 of them, put them out on the boardroom table each with a number next to them and they would try each and every one to give a broad range of opinions. Many followed that publication as the definitive guide to local eats. 

But by 2003 China and the Hong Kong government had enough. They began squeezing the paper financially by indirectly persuading advertisers not to put ads in the pro-democracy paper, even though it was one of the city's most popular papers. 

That resulted in Next Digital having to severely downscale its supplementary publications on entertainment gossip and food, making three separate publications into one magazine.

Last Friday's edition of the paper, 500,000 copies

Last August's raid on the paper and arrest of Lai was a huge blow not only for the company but a horrible signal that press freedom was seriously under threat despite assurances from the government that press freedom is still alive and well in Hong Kong.

Then things accelerated last week with a second raid on the company and the arrest of five executives. It has now come to the point where vendors cannot deposit money into Next Digital's accounts, resulting in the demise of the just turned 26-year-old Apple Daily.

When it is shuttered, it will be the ultimate sign that press freedom is dead in Hong Kong, that free flow of information has been cut, and free speech is questionable.

How can the Hong Kong continue to describe the place as "Asia's World City"?