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Newspaper's union and executives discuss closure

The announcement on Tuesday that the China Times Express (中時晚報) -- a local Chinese-language newspaper -- will be shut down at the end of this month surprised and shocked its 131 employees, who said that they were not notified of the closure beforehand.

A closed-door meeting was held yesterday between representatives from the China Times Workers' Union and China Times exec-utives. Negotiations regarding the employees' demands are underway, but no results have been reached yet, said Tso Ke-ming (左克明), director of the union and a China Times daily-newspaper employee.

The China Times Express has been published for 18 years and was once one of the top-selling even-ing papers in Taiwan. Evening newspapers were once very popular but with the prevalence of e-papers (electronic papers) online now, the paper has not been faring well in recent years.

Tso yesterday said that they were hoping to keep on 55 percent of the evening-paper staff, but discussions were continuing.

According to Chinese-language media reports, some of the employees would be transferred to work for the China Times or its affiliate, the Commercial Times (工商時報).

High-ranking executives were scheduled to meet with the union late in the afternoon yesterday. The outcome would be known today, but will not be publicly announced, Tso said.

When the China Times Express ceases publication at the end of this month, the only other evening newspaper in the local market will be the United Evening News.

Meanwhile ACNielson, a company specializing in the measurement of market performance, revealed yesterday that the best-selling newspaper in the July to September third quarter was the Liberty Times, sister newspaper of the Taipei Times.

The Liberty Times led with readership of 17.8 percent of the total population, followed by Apple Daily (16.4 percent), United Daily News (13.0 percent) and China Times (9.9 percent).

The Liberty Times was ranked second behind the Apple Daily in ACNielson's last survey in the second quarter from April to June.

Prior to the second quarter this year, the Liberty Times was the best-selling local newspaper for nine consecutive years, according to ACNielson ratings.
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