came to Hong Kong from Fortune (a Time publication) based in New York. Closure George, who left Asiaweek before its troubles began, laments the death of the magazine after O'Neill was removed. With Asiaweeks demise, George said, his only regret was the way "the magazine was devalued by the very people who took it upon themselves to nurture it. That is why I shed no tears now as the concept itself was killed in 1994 when Mike was removed by the new management. Its closure [in 2001] is a mere burial." According to Time, the reason for the closure was due to an advertising slump. Executives at Time insist their decisions were based on economic, not editorial, considerations.The New York Times columnist Thomas Crampton writes, "Asiaweek and the Far Eastern Economic Review were the only weekly magazines with a strong Asia focus through the 1980s. But competition grew in the 1990s when global and local media companies expanded into regional editions. In addition to several small regionally financed magazines, The Economist, Fortune, BusinessWeek and Forbes all began aggressive expansions into Asia. These global titles could rely on skeletal staffs and economies of scale." According to Crampton, besides the "brutal competition for limited advertising revenue", another plausible reason for the shakeout was "the suffocating embrace of U.S.-based media giants with an American-centric perspective." For Asiaweeks founding editor, Time Warner's closure of the 26-year-old publication plays into Asian fears of a U.S.-centric world media. "The mandarins of Manhattan fully know Asia's potential," said T. J. S. George, who is now an editorial consultant for the New Indian Express Group. "They want a total monopoly for Time magazine." American involvement 'Asia through Asian eyes' was the slogan that helped Asiaweek rise. Writing in 2009, George was still nostalgic about the fresh and fearless style of the magazine during its heyday and is wary of American meddling in Asian affairs. He warned that "perhaps the most deep-going, subliminal – if also pernicious – mind control weapon at America's disposal is its news media." But Singapore-based Alejandro Reyes, long-time correspondent and contributing editor of Asiaweek, insisted that the magazine retained its strongly Asian voice independent of whatever the bosses in New York might have wanted. He says the magazine's demise was due to the "failure of a pan-Asian marketing strategy impeded by limited resources and intense competition" and is hopeful of the revival of a