Standard fare

The Standard celebrated the new year by having a re-design/makeover. As well as a new – and far less eye-catching – masthead, the paper has introduced a new font for its headlines. It’s a skinny-looking serif thing that experts will no doubt be able to identify. But here’s the main impression: it makes every article look like a paid-for ‘sponsored content’ advertorial pretending to be real news. Which you may think is entirely appropriate.


Best stick to HKFP. An op-ed on delays in Hong Kong in bringing criminal cases to trial…

Connoisseurs of legal bullshit will particularly enjoy Grenville Cross’s reliance on a doctrine which never applied to criminal cases and was formally abolished by the English parliament in 1769.

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7 Responses to Standard fare

  1. Young Winston says:

    The January 9 Standard front page all about someone who likes living in Discovery Bay was surely a paid-for puff piece. It wasn’t even news, FFS. The front covers just prior to that were all about Trump and Venezuela.

  2. Young Winston says:

    There’s also a howling typo in the Standard’s front-page headline today, with GETAWAY instead of GATEWAY (which is correctly spelled in the subhead below it).

  3. Mary Melville says:

    Standard jumped on SCMP bandwagon re layout and shrinking content.
    The Sunday Mag is now nothing more than lots of large images and white space. The content is mostly short promos for food outlets. Print reduced to every second week.
    A full page is wasted on Editor’s Letter – would anyone bother reading this?
    Certainly not worth forking out around $7.000 over a year after yet another price hike.

  4. Red Dragon says:

    Why does the Standard see fit to spell Harbourfront as Harborfront?

    Is the adoption of American spelling part of its exciting new makeover?

    Those of you who care might like to comment.

  5. Young Winston says:

    @ Red Dragon.

    Standard uses “kilometers” and “meters” in a Jan 12, p.5 “Harborfront” article, too, so I guess it’s either poorly subbed AI or they’ve gone American. Looking at that headline I mentioned above, I’m betting on the former.

  6. Reader says:

    @ Red Dragon

    Like much else from the Standard, the perverse use of US spelling is not news (or consistent).
    My hunch is it’s an anti-(British)-colonial thing.

  7. Noah Webster says:

    @Red Dragon

    American spelling is preferred in the PRC.

    That’s why it’s Cheung Kong Center.

    One country, one system.

    Adapt or die.

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