Apple Daily
APPLE DAILY Newspapers in Hong Kong can be first categorized into two large groups, English and Chinese newspapers. The former includes "South China Morning Post" and "The Standard". Both of them are regarded as neutral towards the government and are educational. While for the latter, I will divide them into 3 more categories. First,it is the group which is biased in favour of government, including "Taikungpao" and "Wenweipao". Both of them always stand at the side of government for any critique from citizens. Second, it is a group regarded as formal,including "Singpao", "Singtao", "Mingpao" and " Hong Kong Business Newspaper". The writing style of their articles are regarded as formal and the content of them are healthy and educational towards local students. Therefore, they are highly recommended by local schools to their students. They are all general newspapers except the "Hong Kong Business Newspaper" which is a business - orientated newspaper. For the third one, it is one with newspapers containing pornorgraphy and articles in informal writing style , whcih is therefore regarded as not educational. It includes " Oriental Daily ", " Apple Daily" and "Sun Daily".
The Apple Daily was Founded by Lai Chi Ying in 1995. It is one of the publications of Next Media Interactive Ltd., which is a subsidiary of Next Media Limited. Beside Apple Daily, the Next Media Limited also publishs Next magazine (壹周刊),Easy finder(壹本便利)," Sudden Weekly" and " Eat and Travel Weekly". Apart from Hong Kong markets, the company also targets Taiwan market. It publishes the taiwan version of "Apple Daily" and "Next Magazine".
Actually "Apple Daily" contain 6 main sections, which are "Local News", "Foreign News", "Finance", "Entertainment" ,"Sports" and "Others" - including technology, travel, eat, cooking, fashion and pornography,etc.
At the early age of "Apple Daily" , it was regarded as one of the most popular newspapers newspaper in Hong Kong with its clear standpoint of "Being against HK government". However,several reasons made it a less popular newspaper in the region in recent years. First of all, in July 2000, when Apply Daily Online was born, its presention of material in an "eye-catching" way using the explicit style and horrible pictures of dead people in its reports drive readers away.
Secondly, maybe it wants to gain a higher circulation than other local newspapers, there are always some deviations from fact reported by the other newspaper, making it a less reliable and therefore become less popular.
Thirdly, the newspaper contains pornography materials. In the point of view of educationlist, Apple Daily is never regarded as a healthy newspaper. This can be reflected by the recommendation of "MingPao", which is also a local chinese newspaper yet without pornography materials.
Another reason making the Apple Daily less popular comes from its main competitor, the Orient Daily. As these two newspapers have similar reporting style, the masses usually regard them as substitutive with each other. After several business wars of price-cut, the market share of Apple Daily declined and it also became less popular.
Nevertheless, Apply Daily still remains one of the most popular newspapers for some reasons. Firstly, its style of writing is sometimes easier to read because of its narrative style, which is arguably not suitable for professional writing. Secondly, its anti-government stance favours many readers because the latter often have bitter sentiment against the government for their bad livelihood. Thirdly, the style of reporting of Apple Daily attracts a lot of curious readers. Apple Daily is well known for bringing paparazzi into Hong Kong. The paparazzi aim at discovering the life of famous people behind the scene by following these people everywhere. This style of reporting by paparazzi has now been widely used by the media. Other newspapers and magazines also employ paparazzi to follow famous people in order to raise their circulation. Although the artists have tried to express their unsatifaction through actions like refusing to have interview or even sueing the reporters for writing news deviated from facts, they cannot stop the actions of the paparazzi. See also: Media in Hong Kong.