Reminiscence of an Aborted Revolution

Inside Apple Daily’s Struggle to Transform Itself ,and Hong Kong’s Public Sphere, Against All Odds

If you’re interested in a success story about the subscription economy, look no further than Apple Daily.

We launched our subscription model in 2019, and within just three months, we skyrocketed from zero to nearly 800,000 subscribers. For context, it took the New York Times almost five years to reach one million paid subscribers.

When we started Apple Daily in 1995, we soon adopted a hybrid model — Hong Kong’s best-selling newspaper, with the busiest website in the area.

However, 2014 proved to be a critical year for us. Online advertising revenue began to decline, largely due to competition from social media. Our print business struggled, and it became clear that advertising was no longer a viable business model for us.

Apple Daily needed to transform.

I had discussed the potential of transforming the organization with Jimmy Lai since late 2016, but it wasn’t until 2018 that I was brought in again to explore a subscription-based model.

We knew we would no longer be selling “paper,” as such transactional models were becoming obsolete. However, we had no clue how to…