100 years ago, yellow journalism emerged in response to people's wants. It ended up in the mass criticism of the industry and the rise of professional journalism which stresses social responsibility and sees the industry as a public service provider1. Nevertheless, towards the end of this century, history repeated itself with the founding of USA Today, a daily that aimed at providing fast-food like information for the impatient readers at an age of information explosion in the 80s2. Inspired by USA Today's success, the former owner of Giordano apparel, Jimmy Lai Chee Ying, launched a new Chinese daily, Apple Daily, based on the model of USA Today. As a businessman, Lai incorporated the whole of the economic theory into the operation of Apple Daily, where the market was seen as the primary and sole factor or power governing the practice of the daily. Catching the wants of the consumers, Apple Daily soon became the second highest circulation newspaper in Hong Kong3. The success of Apple Daily made itself the prototype for other newspapers to copy from. From then on, the market-driven model rooted in the journalism industry of Hong Kong. What followed is a drastic change in the organizational structure and the market atmosphere as well as our society. With a view to investigating into the market-driven model of journalism in Hong Kong, I am going to examine the practice and features of Apple Daily, the initiating force of turning the industry into completely commercial in nature in this paper. Operational Model of Apple Daily as a Market-Driven Medium The basic principle for the market-driven model is profit maximization4. Under this model, news is seen as a commodity for sale to and be consumed by the consumers, instead of a public good that serves both the purpose to inform and to educate. Medium is a tool for making money and every decision within is made according to its associated monetary benefit. Ben H. Bagdikian mentioned in "the Media Monopoly  that news under a market-driven model is reported to audience not for information but for making them a product to sell to the advertisers5. Based on this belief, Apple Daily is operated in a bid to generate the greatest profit possible to Lai. Reader is King According to McManus, a medium has to compete for readers, advertisers, sources and investors, with which readers are the first one has to fight for6. In a typical market model, advertisers and investors are the most important considerations since they are the sources of profits for the medium7. However, seeing that readers are the magnet of advertisements and investments, Apple Daily holds firm to the belief that reader is king. "Apple Daily is a 100% reader-oriented daily. Readers' benefits are our foremost concern and readers' interests are our blueprint, 8 mentioned by the former chief editor of Apple Daily, Ip Yut Kin. Applying theory into practice, Apple Daily held many different kinds of activities to collect feedbacks from the readers, for instance, focus group interviews, 24-hour hotline, an everyday column featuring the behind-the-scene in Apple Daily and so on9. The feedbacks received then serve as the basis for the management to make changes. Readers as the Highest Decision Makers in the Newsroom Under the traditional model of journalistic theory, editors are given the highest authority in deciding the content of a newspaper10. However, in a market model, the decision making authority is given to the profit generator. Diagram 1 shows the news production environment under