Hong Kong youth and culture magazine Breakazine to stop publishing in early 2025, ending 16 years of history
Hong Kong Free Press
Hong Kong youth and culture magazine Breakazine has announced that it will stop publishing from early 2025, ending its 16-year history.
In a statement published on Facebook on Thursday afternoon, the magazine said it had been increasingly hard to operate in recent years as production costs rose and people’s reading habits changed.
“To better accommodate the needs of Hong Kong’s youth, after careful consideration our editorial team felt we needed more space to adjust our deployment,” the Chinese post read. “We’ve decided that Breakazine will stop publishing in April 2025.”
Founded in 2009 by non-profit Christian youth services organisation Breakthrough, the magazine currently publishes on a quarterly basis, with each 100-page issue exploring a particular social topic.
By early July, it had published 77 issues, covering themes such as housing, urban planning, gender, mental health and local politics. Its latest issue was on the work conditions of freelancers.
Before it ceases publishing, the magazine will adjust its production pace, launching one issue by the end of the year, and another reviewing its work over the past 16 years.
Once a bi-monthly magazine, the publisher announced in 2017 it would begin to publish every three months, citing a drop in sales and difficulties in making ends meet.
“In 2014, the magazine’s sales reached a peak due to the enthusiasm of Hong Kong people participating in political movements. However, thanks to political sensitivity during that time, the magazine also lost some of its stable, large-scale donations,” the magazine’s editor-in-chief said in an article in 2017.
“Afterwards, we made efforts to recruit smaller ‘patrons’, but found that readers felt fatigued and unable to bear the weight of the content, leading to a continuous decline in sales.”
The editor said at the time that the magazine would try to seek more partnerships and transform the content of the magazine to cover exhibitions and activities.
A response to liberal studies
Breakazine said on Thursday that the magazine had always focused on youth and culture issues in “a response to Liberal Studies.”
Introduced in 2009, Liberal Studies was once one of four core subjects in the senior secondary curriculum. According to the Education Bureau, the subject aimed to enhance students’ awareness of contemporary issues, strengthen their critical thinking, and broaden their knowledge base.
The subject was overhauled and renamed Citizenship and Social Development in 2021, following the 2019 protests and unrest. Pro-Beijing politicians and state-owned media outlets criticised Liberal Studies for “poisoning” Hong Kong’s youth.
After the enactment of the Beijing-imposed national security law, Breakazine suspended the circulation of one issue, the theme of which was Dangerous Reading.
Changing media landscape
Hong Kong’s media landscape has been transformed since the national security law came into force in June 2020. While outlets in the city contend with the same issues as those encountered globally – such as the rise in social media as a source of news – it has also seen several newsrooms forced to close, including Stand News, Citizen News, Apple Daily and Factwire.
Explainer: The decline of Hong Kong’s press freedom under the national security law
With journalists behind bars and newsrooms raided, the city has plummeted down the Reporters Without Borders international press freedom ranking, placing 135th out of 180 countries and territories in 2024.
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