THE PACIFIC : Business as Asia Sees It : Thai Publisher’s Paper Will Have an Eastern Perspective

At the West Los Angeles offices of Buzz magazine, receptionists have to be reminded to patch Sondhi Limthongkul’s calls through immediately. Otherwise, they might just hear the unfamiliar name and offer to take a message.

Even at the irreverent Los Angeles city magazine that owes its life to a $13-million infusion from the soft-spoken Thai publisher, Sondhi remains a little-known figure except among the top editors who are his business partners.

But that seems destined to change. Already a powerful figure in Asian publishing and television, the Thai millionaire and UCLA alumnus this week launches Asia’s first daily English-language business newspaper.

And, in 1997, he plans to send up the first of three powerful satellites that will be used to broadcast an Asian news network, going head to head with Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV, Ted Turner’s CNN International and the BBC’s World Service Television.

Emboldened by Asia’s economic muscle and regional pride, the 48-year-old businessman says the people of Asia want to tell their stories from their own perspective, not through the distorting filter of Western culture.

“I’m not trying to impugn Western journalistic standards, but they are a bit different from what we want,” he said recently in a Los Angeles interview. “Maybe it’s time to tell the world what Asians think and Asians want.”

Sondhi is already doing just that, through a rapidly expanding media empire that includes several dozen publications ranging from Asia Inc., a glossy business magazine, to such titles as Asian Dentist. He also publishes Thailand’s most influential financial newspapers and magazines and has started an Asian equivalent of America Online.

Manager Media Group, the company’s main publishing arm, is listed on the Thai stock exchange and has assets of $700 million.

Next is the daily Asia Times, a publication he calls Asia’s answer to the London-based Financial Times. It will be published in Bangkok, Hong Kong and Singapore and deliver the Asian viewpoint to an English-reading audience in Asia that is estimated at up to 1 million.

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Sondhi says he will put his money where his mouth is. He says Asia Times won’t break even for at least five years, and he is ready to invest $60 million to keep it going. He has just come back from a trip to Europe seeking international partners for the satellite venture, which carries a $200-million to $300-million price tag.

“Anybody who’s smart should be watching him,” said Gary Brown, regional media manager for Leo Burnett Ltd. in Hong Kong.

He is taking on some of the world’s biggest media names--Dow Jones & Co., BBC, News Corp. and the soon-to-be merged Time-Warner Inc./Turner Broadcasting System. But what is getting attention is his passionate conviction that an Asian voice is needed to offset a Western press that is culturally myopic in its coverage of everything from economic summits to human rights abuses in China.

Europe has the Financial Times. The United States has the Wall Street Journal. Why shouldn’t Asia, home to more than half the world’s population and of the fastest-growing economies, have its own voice?

Sondhi, the son of ethnic Chinese who migrated to Thailand several generations ago, is convinced that he is mining a potentially rich vein of discontent among influential Asians who believe their region has not gotten a fair shake.

In recent years, Asian leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad have become increasingly aggressive about clamping down on foreign and domestic journalists who publish critical or controversial articles.

To some Westerners, the charges of cultural bias are a smoke screen for Asia’s authoritarian governments to quash criticism. But those interested in gaining entry to Asia’s lucrative and highly regulated media markets are also discovering they must tread carefully or risk being shut out.

Murdoch learned that lesson several years ago when he incurred the wrath of the Chinese government by proclaiming that satellite television would strike a death knell for totalitarian governments. Shortly after that, China passed a law regulating satellite dishes, and Murdoch began scrambling to make amends, eventually agreeing to yank the BBC off Star TV’s broadcasts into China after the British network aired reports critical of the Chinese government.

Last week, the South Korean government threatened a libel suit against the Wall Street Journal over an article it believed impugned the integrity of President Kim Young Sam. The government dropped its threat after the Journal published an “amplification.”

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While insisting his Asia Times won’t pull punches, such clashes are proof to Sondhi that there is an audience for a high-quality Asian media outlet providing news for Asia, by Asians.

“Why let Dow Jones monopolize my turf?” Sondhi asks. “I think I know the region better than Dow Jones, and so do our correspondents, who are local hires.”

The stakes are high. U.S. media giants are scrambling to expand their reach to the nearly 3 billion potential viewers and readers in a giant communications footprint stretching from Pakistan to Japan and Australia to the Pacific Islands.

Murdoch declined to be interviewed for this story.

Karen Elliott House, president of international operations for Dow Jones & Co., dismissed the idea that there exists an “Asian” viewpoint.

“There is no ‘Asian’ in the sense of a collective Asian mentality where everybody sees themselves as that,” she said. She said Dow Jones’ Asian Wall Street Journal and Far Eastern Economic Review have loyal followings because they provide accurate and “objective” coverage by correspondents who live and work in Asia. Dow Jones also is a partner in a 2-year-old television venture called Asia Business News.

Asia’s readers couldn’t care less “if our paper is produced in Hong Kong and Mr. Sondhi’s paper is produced in Bangkok,” she said. “They just care about the quality, relevance and credibility of the information in it.”

Ted McFarland, president of Turner International, believes Asian viewers turn to CNN for a “world view” that is broader than that of Asian-generated news programs. He said there is room for both, given the seemingly limitless appetite of these developing economies.

Many question whether Sondhi’s pockets are deep enough--how deep, he won’t reveal--to go up against the likes of Turner or Murdoch, who are investing billions on their global ventures. The financial and logistic hurdles in Asia are huge because of the vast distances, diversities of language and culture, and the maze of regulations erected by governments trying to protect their own countries’ media businesses and maintain tight control over information.

But Sondhi’s record makes him a serious contender. After returning home with degrees from UCLA and Utah State University in the mid-’70s, he began producing a business magazine that took off with the Thai economy. Success in publishing and the stock market supported his expansion into real estate and other ventures. At one point, he made a bid for United Press International.

“He’s one of the most dynamic people in Asia doing new media,” said Everett Dennis, head of the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University.

Where does Buzz fit? He said that acquisition was an “emotional decision” based on a poignant plea from the three Buzz founders who came to him for money in 1991 after having lost a major investor.

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He said Buzz is achieving an influential role as a voice of Los Angeles, at least of the Los Angeles that is in its mid- to late-30s, has an annual income of $140,000 or more and drinks premium liquor. Though the magazine is not yet profitable, national advertising is booming and paid circulation is at 110,000.

“It’s looking good,” he said. “It should have broke even last year, but the price of paper shot up almost 60%.” Besides, Sondhi’s got some unfinished business with a U.S. immigration officer in Los Angeles who asked him in the 1960s why he was coming to America.

“I’m going to become a businessman,” Sondhi responded quickly.

The words the officer said next are seared on his brain, the memory as fresh several decades later as if the event had happened yesterday: “What are you going to do, buy a noodle shop?”

Without thinking, Sondhi snapped back: “Hey, Mr. Whatsyourname. You’re going to hear from me. Loud and clear. I want all you Americans to hear from me.”

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Profile: Sondhi Limthongkul

* Age: 48

* Home: Bangkok

* Family: Married with one son

* Title: Chairman of M Group Public Co., a Bangkok-based holding company controlling more than 50 companies with assets valued at $700 million.

* Holdings: Publications in Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong and the United States include Asia Inc.; Financial Day and Phu Chad Karn daily, weekly and monthly publications; Expression, an American Express magazine, and a host of specialty titles. Owns Asia Inc. Online, and I-Media, an interactive media company in Singapore.