WHy not publish response from Kitto's old colleagues about the magazines being "stolen away"? This site is starting to look like his personal PR service.

Fionola,

That is what the comments are for. Publish away. If you have something to say.

i am not an ex colleague of kitto, but i was (unwittingly for the most part) involved in the take over process by the wu zhou group. trust me, stealing away the magazine was the intention from the word go. the strategy as far as I could see was to befriend kitto, get his trust and then, when the time was right, screw him. It was even described to me by a certain well-known expat restaurant owner (who was brought in to advise) that it would be a very simple M&A.

Ashamed to say that my recommendation to the SCIO that That's was the best english language magazine in Beijing at that time was what set the ball rolling. If only I had recommended Metrozine ;-)

Thanks for the information. I'm not a colleague of Mr. Kitto's. Just curious. We never seem to hear what happened from the other side. Those who have written about it could easily ring up that expat restaurant owner for a comment, for instance, I should think.

do a google search and you'll find some articles giving both sides of the story.

Wonder when Kitto will be screwed out of this venture??

The destination looks good and inviting, but for Chrissake, Mr. Kitto should do something about the hideous-looking website...

Poor Kitto, bet he's missing the team who built the previous sites for the magazines, when he was still in charge. Rumour has it the original "that's" web team is about to launch a new site in Shanghai. Classifieds I think. Maybe they'll do Kitto a favour on the side.

That's' current site is not imprssive either. Not sure Kitto misses them at all...

Not sure what you mean by 'either'. The original site was great! Especially the classifieds. But that was over two years ago. I agree, the people who took over That's have been absolutely clueless!

Mark did manage to build up a lot of ill-will during his time in Shanghai, but regardless what happened to him was unfortunate. There was a long discussion of the subject on the Shanghai FCC boards a while ago, at http://www.fccsh.org/forum/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=22&TopicID=47&PagePosition=1&ThreadPage=1 if anyone's interested.

Moganshan's a lovely place, and I wish Mark all the best with the cafe. Definitely a need for something like that there.