Magazine's ad stunt goes to the dogs

A giant dog-shaped canvas that covered a building in the center of Taipei's Hsimenting district as an advertisement campaign for a new tabloid-style Chinese-language magazine was removed yesterday.

Following complaints by public officials, Next (壹週刊) dropped part of its US$3.6 million advertising blitz that turned a 17-story building on Chunghwa Road in Hsimenting into a gigantic advert that resembled a dog's head -- an allusion to paparazzi, known in Chinese as "doggy team" (狗仔隊).

New Party city councilors James Wei (魏憶龍) and Teng Chia-chi (鄧家基) said that the "landmark," despite making the streets more cartoon-like, was in violation of "commercial sign management measures" (廣告物管理辦法). After receiving a report from the councilors, the Office of Building Standards (建管處) under the Bureau of Public Works (工務局) yesterday ordered the canvas to be removed.

The magazine has taken the spotlight in Taiwan over the past month due to its reputation for an aggressive style of reporting and stories written to shock, coupled with glossy, revealing photographs showing aspects of celebrities' private lives. This approach is in stark contrast to most local rivals, which rely mostly on text.

"I want the pictures to deliver as much information as possible," the magazine's chief, Jimmy Lai (黎智英), once told reporters.

The flamboyant publishing magnate Lai, 52, also founded the budget fashion chain Giordano and the Hong Kong-based Apple Daily (蘋果日報) newspaper.

He has hired about half of the 300 reporters who were laid off by Tomorrow Times (明日報), Taiwan's online newspaper which folded in February after a year in the red.

The magazine's sensational style has also drawn fire for intruding on people's private lives. Critics say that personal privacy should be protected and that the media has no right to disclose people's private lives in order to draw readers.

Chao Chien-min (趙建銘), the president's future son-in-law, became one of the targets of Next in its first issue, which revealed Chao's past romances.

The magazine's first issue of nearly 280,000 copies was sold out on May 31, its first day on store shelves, making it the country's best-selling weekly magazine.