I thought today’s Taipei Times review of the Lan Yang Dancers was a very nice article. It was a major improvement on the travel column a few weeks ago, which accompanied a gratuitious photo of a guy with a swastika tatoo.
Today’s article provided useful information, and also told an interesting story about a very colorful character. The reporter clearly spent some time studying the subject at hand, and put some real effort into turning out a small gem of a review. With a little more polish and reporting, a review like this would easily run in the New York Times, or New Yorker Magazine. Let’s hope the around town section of Taiwan’s leading English language newspaper will continue to improve.
I had high hopes for the Taipei Times when it first came out, but it’s still an overpriced and underpaged paper, just like the other ones. The China Post has better comics.
Richard, Mikehs did say beginner and intermediate…
Not everyone is at your level yet. For a beginner I think reading ZiYou Bao is not exactly more practical.
I think the Taipei Times has slipped considerably in the seven years I’ve been living in Taiwan. Neither TT nor the China Post can really be considered objective journalism. I don’t think they even try. I tend to go with the China Post more and more often, it has better sports coverage for one thing. TT seems to think baseball, soccer and basketball are all there is.
I’d like to introduce a little concept called “Attribution”. You might find it useful in your headlines in the future, since you can’t seem to decide what’s “news” and what’s “op/ed” material. How about, instead of just saying “So-and-so is something”, add a word or two indicating that this is just something someone said, and not, you know, a fact.
As much as people might like to complain about it, it is still unquestionably better than the China Post and Taiwan News.
Newspapers are fast losing market share to the internet. None of the English papers in Taiwan have done a major redesign or modified their content to help them retain readers. They also haven’t done enough to position and design their internet sites to be potentially profitable.
The future of mainstream English-language media in Taiwan looks grim.
What do you read if you actually want to find out what the news is? Seriously. If the Liberty Times were your main source of news, you’d have no idea what the hell has been happening domestically the past year. It’s quite hilarious how ever since this long series of shits hitting fans for the pan-greens has started, the Liberty Times has avoided putting any hard news on their front page if at all possible.
There may be hope. There appear to be plenty of smart and talented reporters at the Taipei Times. Today’s paper has two business articles which are informative and interesting. Lisa Wang provided a solid analysis of BenQ’s restructuring. Jason Tan turned out a very nice feature on Taiwan’s barbell king. Both stories with a little more reporting could have run in any of the major regional business publications --Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, AWSJ, Businessweek, Forbes.
It’s unfortunately that some very fine reporting in some parts of the paper is packaged together with what appears at times to be shoddy and tasteless editing in the travel and arts section. :s
And in another stunning example of responsible reporting we have the "Men tiptoe to the spa " article.
First of all, newspapers articles on the whole metrosexual and men going to the spa thing are so 5 minutes ago. Good of them to hop on this about 5 years too late.
Second of all, nice little plug for, um, a gay house of pleasure: “So Young is masculine and appeals to men who are put off by the feminine decor and services offered by crossover spas. Simple, straightforward treatments are the order of the day.” A quick glance at their Web site listed in the bottom (no pun intended) of the article tells me they might be offering a different sort of facial.
TAIPEI TIMES, Friday, 22 Sep, 2006
page 12, BUSINESS.
Middle of page, 5 column, full color photo,
caption -
BEATING THEIR MEAT
Of course this is merely balancing out the Wed. 20 Sep 2006, page 9, the TAIWAN NEWS promo piece on GLENLIVET 1972 Limited Edition Single Malt in which the daring “Staff Reporter,” Marie Feliciano boldly pronounced that the Glenlivet makers were - “Cocksure about Glenlivet’s leadership in the single malt whisky category, Logan said the distiller was on a league all its own.”
I do hope she had sampled well the subject prior to filing this copy.
