Alibaba agrees to buy South China Morning Post, and other media assets

Announcing the deal on Thursday night, Alibaba, founded by one of China's richest and most recognisable billionaire businessmen, Jack Ma, pledged to uphold editorial independence while leveraging the group's digital expertise to transform the 112-year-old English-language newspaper to a media entity with global reach.

In a letter to South China Morning Post readers, Joseph Tsai, Alibaba's chairman, said the company would maintain the newspaper's editorial independence.

Tsai said he has a vision of expanding SCMP's coverage globally, marrying Alibaba's technology experience with the Post's journalism record.

"SCMP is uniquely positioned to help people around the world to understand China better...what is good for that understanding is also good for understanding Alibaba", Tsai said.

"The worst will be if Alibaba restricts [SCMP's] reporting to make it more hard to report on Chinese politics and certain Chinese companies", said David Schlesinger, the Hong Kong-based managing director of media consultant Tripod Advisors. That will depend on reporting that is objective, balanced and fair.

The sale includes the newspaper; magazine business, including local editions of Elle, Harper's Bazaar, and Esquire, and related businesses such as outdoor media, custom publishing and events.

Ma is co-opting Alibaba's public shareholders to lend him a hand buying an asset with no clear fit.

Chinese-language dailies may be more influential than the Post, but changes in its editorial direction are seen as a barometer for press freedom under Chinese rule.

The South China Morning Post has long reported on issues that China's state-run media couldn't cover, including human rights issues or political scandals.

It's part of Alibaba's diversification beyond e-commerce into online content for Chinese consumers. The e-commerce group is involving itself in media elsewhere, too: It said in June that it had agreed with Shanghai Media Group to invest $194 million in the latter's China Business News unit.

It has also branched out, buying ChinaVision Media in 2014 and renaming it Alibaba Pictures, today China's biggest film company, which produced this year's blockbuster "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation".

SCMP Group's net profit has declined for the past four years, falling last year to 137 million Hong Kong dollars ($24 million) on HK$1.2 billion in revenue, according to its latest annual report.

In 1993, Malaysian tycoon Robert Kuok's Kerry Media bought a controlling interest in the SCMP. We see things differently, we believe things should be presented as they are.

Alibaba's prominence and continued expansion has made it one of China's most closely covered companies.