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Magazine going places despite downturn

Many of Taiwan's major newspapers and magazines are cutting pages and laying off staff as the nation tries to limp out of its first recession in decades.

Diane Ying (殷允凡) is doing the opposite. The publisher and editor-in-chief of Common Wealth (天下雜誌) is expanding the business magazine, one of Taiwan's most influential periodicals. This month, Ying abandoned the Chinese-language publication's monthly format and became a biweekly.

"Almost every day, things are changing. Business is getting faster," the soft-spoken Ying said in a recent interview in fluent English. "That's why we thought we needed to quicken our pace."

Founded by Ying 20 years ago, Common Wealth is the flagship of a media empire that publishes books as well as other magazines about health, work and technology. The periodical is known for its long, thoughtful and well-researched articles about the people and trends that are shaping Taiwan's business world.

Common Wealth -- which Ying says has a print run of 80,000 to 90,000 -- also covers the areas where business overlaps with politics, culture and society.

Ying has a master's degree from the University of Iowa and has reported for the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Asian Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, among other publications. She has also taught journalism at National Chengchi University, one of Taiwan's top schools.

Ying acknowledged that this is a tough time to expand a magazine. The nation's economy is recovering slowly. The media market is still overcrowded. Competition for advertising revenue is fierce.

But she said that Common Wealth had no other choice but to go biweekly if it wants to keep up with its readers' work and lifestyle trends. Many busy professionals no longer had time to wade through the monthly magazine's 240 pages, she said.

"We became too heavy and too thick," Ying said.

After the magazine's relaunch this month, the articles became shorter and the writing more concise, she said. Common Wealth -- which now weighs in at about 210 pages -- even switched to a lighter paper stock so its readers, who frequently read while commuting, will have an easier time carrying the magazine, she said.

But Common Wealth's goal remains the same: to provide in depth coverage of the business issues affecting Taiwan, Ying said.

This brand of journalism is hard to find in Taiwan, and she worries that the nation's newspapers and 24-hour cable news stations have flooded the public with negative stories about crime, political feuding and gossip.

"I think people are losing their confidence and feeling powerless," she said. "I don't think Taiwan is as hopeless and chaotic as our local media present it."

The recent plunge on Wall Street and the fallout from the Enron scandal has affected Taiwan's stock market, and Ying suspects that the nation has its own "small and big Enrons."
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