Before Murdoch, a Malaysian Tycoon and Jack “Alibaba” Ma the South China Morning Post was owned by….a dentist!

From Murdoch to Kuok to Ma…but back in the day the SCMP was the proud possession of an American dentist….

After having lampooned its launch in 1903, the Hongkong Telegraph was merged into the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong (where newspapers always appeared to be far more businesslike than in the treaty ports) when Jardine Matheson’s wealthy Eurasian comprador Robert Hotung sold a controlling interest in the Telegraph to Dr. Joseph Whittlesey Noble in 1916. Noble, from Pennsylvania, was Hong Kong’s second registered dentist who had been in practice in the colony since 1887, meaning that the Post held the dubious distinction of being the only newspaper in the world to be owned by a dentist.