Media `localization' difficult to implement

Six years ago, a burgeoning Taiwanese consciousness influenced local media to start reporting stories from a more Taiwanese perspective, rather than from the mainland-influenced point of view that had previously dominated the news. The failure of those efforts has sparked a debate as to whether the attempt was justified in the first place.

Reacting to the trend, the China Times developed a localization policy, opening two regional offices in Kaohsiung and Taichung and running a nationwide advertising campaign promoting "a localized life, a localized China Times."

The two regional offices were closed in May, however, leading to protests by dismissed employees and raising questions about regionalization in Taiwan.

Taiwanese media outlets were severely regulated by strict government restrictions until 1988. No newspaper could exceed 12 pages and publication of any story deemed anti-government was illegal. With the development of pro-democracy movements, the 1987 lifting of martial law and the subsequent lifting of media controls a year later, a Taiwanese consciousness finally began exerting an influence on the nation's media.

no isolated effort

By 1994, the Liberty Times began to promote itself as "A newspaper that cares about 20 million Taiwanese," while advertisements for the Taiwan Times, based in Kaohsiung, proudly proclaimed, "Taiwanese read the Taiwan Times and discuss Taiwanese business."

Also in 1994, the China Times' Taipei office and its two newly established regional editorial offices began to produce three different versions of the newspaper, providing alternatives for readers outside Taipei who did not wish to read that city's news.

Huang Chao-sung (黃肇松), the current president of the China Times who, as the newspaper's executive editor, was in charge of implementing the localization policy, admitted to a Chinese monthly, Wealth Magazine (財訊月刊) in 1995, that there were marketing considerations behind the policy, but said that the China Times wanted to be a newspaper which published regional news instead of a national newspaper whose capacity to cover regional news was limited by the fact that its only office was in Taipei.

"The establishment of the two regional editorial offices is intended to bring useful competition to other newspapers in Kaohsiung and Taichung, and these newspapers should also move up to Taipei to compete with us for future development. On the other hand, politics and public opinion are becoming regionalized in Taiwan. We want to attract readers' support by offering news more closely linked to them," Huang told the magazine.

Yang Ju-chun (楊汝椿), a journalist with the United Evening News who has reported on Taiwan's media, said that the establishment of the two offices had nothing to do with localization but was all about marketing.

"As I understand it, the China Times established the two editorial offices in Taichung and Kaohsiung because when it was published solely in Taipei, the newspaper's circulation was anemic. To increase its circulation around Taiwan and attract more readers, they decided to establish the two regional editorial offices. Since the policy was established for marketing reasons, I am not surprised about the cutbacks during these bad economic times," Yang said.

Evaluating the contributions of the China Times' two local editorial offices, a journalist from the China Times, who wished to remain anonymous, said that the newspaper's localization effort had failed.