Thailand—the 'land of smiles'? David Armstrong has run—as editor-in-chief—many major newspapers including The Australian and The South China Morning Post. We catch up with him in his new role as president and chief operating officer of the Bangkok Post

Business Asia, August, 2007

One morning about two years ago, David Armstrong was sitting in his office in the Bangkok Post building when he heard about 100 staff members yelling out, calling for his resignation. All were dressed in black.

Armstrong's sin? He had dismissed a Bangkok Post reporter--for negligence. It was said this was the first time in the 60-year life of the newspaper, economic retrenchments aside, that a reporter had been sacked.

Working in Asia involves adjustments to different cultures, philosophies, ways of thinking and ways of working. Armstrong, a former editor-in-chief of The Australian, looks back on that time as his most abrupt lesson.

He began learning about working in Asia in the early 1990s, when he went to Hong Kong to run the South China Morning Post.

"I thought I knew something about the importance of personal relationships in Asia," Armstrong says. "I had worked in Hong Kong for six years, traveled extensively in China and dealt with Chinese officials and business people, developing close relationships, even with ministers.

"But nothing prepared me for dealing with the intensity of personal relationships in Thailand."

Armstrong, 59, is president and chief operating officer of Post Publishing, which produces the Bangkok Post, a Thai-language business paper, Post Today, and Thai versions of international magazines. It has just installed a new $A35 million high-speed printing press.

But in August 2005, he was filling in as Bangkok Post editor. The paper twice ran a story reporting that US experts had prepared a report saying there were big cracks in the runways at Bangkok's new airport and that two runways would need to be rebuilt.

"I asked them to check the story before publishing," says Armstrong--who then had to leave Bangkok to address an Australian newspaper industry conference.

"But they published the story without checks. It turned out the source had no connection with the airport, there were no big cracks, no US experts, no report and no need to rebuild the runways.

"We had to retract the story. We were sued for criminal libel and the airport's lawyers foreshadowed a civil case demanding 1 billion Thai baht (about $A35 million).

"It looked like grounds for dismissal to me--but not to many of the staff. To them, the reporter's 22 years of service and their long friendship were far more important.

"In Thailand, the boss is meant to be forgiving--and I wasn't forgiving enough. "Thailand is also a very legalistic country, so even though we played this dismissal by the book, and then some, the case ended up in court--and is still there"

But there was also another lesson in the incident. "People say you mustn't get angry with Thais," Armstrong says. "After all, Thailand is the 'Land of Smiles'.

"It's not true. What you mustn't do is lose your cool and abuse them. But you can speak coldly and sternly if you need to."

Armstrong called a staff meeting and spoke to them with what he calls controlled coldness. They went back to work and the black gear disappeared.

Armstrong began his career as a reporter on The Australian in 1969. In 1989, he became the first journalist to start on the paper and be appointed editor. He first worked in Asia in 1993, when he started running the South China Morning Post. In 1996, he returned to Sydney as editor-inchief of The Australian.

While in Hong Kong, Armstrong developed close relationships with Chinese officials, especially at People's Daily, the official newspaper, and China Daily, its English-language counterpart.

In 1999, when the then-president of China Jiang Zemin was due to visit Australia, he decided to give one Australian media interview. It was a contest between different Australian media outlets. The People's Daily contacts came good: Armstrong and The Australian's political guru, Paul Kelly, were suddenly advised to "plan an early trip to Beijing."

In 2001, Armstrong's wife, Deb Bailey, a top magazine editor, died of motor neurone disease. Two years later he was asked to come back to Hong Kong as editor-in-chief of the SCMP Group. His two daughters, Claire and Jane, are at university in Sydney.

SCMP has a 22 per cent holding in Post Publishing and Armstrong was appointed to the board in Bangkok in 2004. The company was without a managing director and he was asked to join. He moved to Thailand in 2005. His main task has been to change a 1990s-style newspaper company into a modern media operation.

"Thailand is a wonderful place to live," Armstrong says. "And Post Publishing is a good company the market leader in the English language and in Thai-language business newspapers.

"But it can be an awfully frustrating place to work. Unlike Hong Kong, everything happens very slowly. It takes time to adjust to the pace and the business culture. You have to spend time building understanding of change, if not quite consensus. Thai children generally are brought up not to question things, so getting people to ask questions and act differently is hard.

"Thailand is also a very bureaucratic country. When people ask me what I do, I sometimes say: 'Sign documents'. Bangkok Post once applied to the Thai stock exchange for a password so it could download stock information to print. That required 64 signatures. After more than two years, I still haven't adjusted to the bureaucracy. It's annoying and pointless."