Pegatron Corp (和碩) chairman Tung Tsu-hsien (童子賢) yesterday said he has donated “tens of millions” of New Taiwan dollars to newly established online media outlet the Reporter in the hope of raising the quality of the nation’s journalism.
“Taiwan’s media spend too much time on reporting breaking news and too little on reporting non-political and non-industry-related news,” Tung said at a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
“I hope this new media outlet will contribute to a change in this regard,” Tung said.
Tung declined to confirm if he had donated NT$20 million (US$611,995) or if his contribution was the largest among nine other donors.
He said that neither he nor the other sponsors are the owners of the media outlet.
“To ensure the independence of the outlet, I decided on three principles: I would not own shares in it, I would not intervene in its operations and I would not profit from it,” Tung said, adding that the other sponsors had also agreed to abide by these tenets.
The Reporter is the first online media outlet operated by a non-profit foundation in Taiwan and does not have a specific owner overseeing it, said Ho Jung-shin (何榮幸), cofounder of the Reporter and former editor-in-chief of the Chinese-language CommonWealth Magazine.
Ho said that the Reporter would not rely on income from advertising and aims to provide investigative reports, exclusive interviews and analysis to readers.
“We aim to offer insightful news stories rather than breaking news to readers,” Ho said at the news conference.
Ho said that funding for the Reporter would mainly come from large donations from various sources before it is officially launched by the end of this year and after that the outlet plans to launch a membership program to draw a steady revenue stream from subscribers.
“We hope to gradually reduce our reliance on large donations as we think small and steady donations from individuals would keep this new media outlet running longer,” he said.
Ho said it would cost approximately NT$35 million per year to run the Reporter and he hopes that eventually more than 50 percent of the funds would come from the outlet’s registered members.
Tung said that an increase in registered members would suggest that readers agree with the Reporter’s mission of providing insightful news stories instead of breaking news.
Separately, Tung reiterated that Pegatron, an assembler of Apple Inc’s iPhones, would enjoy revenue growth in the second half of this year from the first half’s NT$493.4 billion, due to the upcoming launch of a new generation of iPhones.
“We are very busy at the moment,” Tung said.
“We’ve been recruiting staff to meet clients’ demand,” he said.
Commenting on Hon Hai Precision Industry Co’s (鴻海精密) strategic alliance with Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密), Tung said he does not think the cooperation between the two companies would affect Pegatron’s business outlook, as Pegatron’s silicon substrate subsidiary, Kinsus Interconnect Technology Corp (景碩科技), has been in the semiconductor industry for decades and has it own position in the market.
Pegatron shares dropped 0.95 percent to NT$83.4 in Taipei trading yesterday, outperforming the TAIEX, which lost 1.92 percent.
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