Taiwan's first weekly magazine focusing specifically on cross-strait commerce, Biznews, is out of business, the magazine's publishers and editorial staff said yesterday.
A lack of investment capital, shrinking advertising budgets due to the economic downturn and a failure to understand what the public wants to know about cross-strait business issues put the seven-month-old magazine out of business almost before it got off the ground.
"At the beginning, we expected to raise NT$10 million, but we only raised half that amount. And the expenses inherent in covering stories in China became prohibitive. Lacking the investment we needed, we decided to close the magazine," the publication's president Chen Chau-ping (
Huang Hung-jen (
"The structure of the media market is changing. NT$10 million could have supported a magazine's existence a year ago, but not now. Advertisements and circulation are shrinking due to the economy and the human resource expenses and the cost of paper pulp are rising," Huang said.
Biznews' first issue was published last November and the statistic-packed magazine was expected to sell well at the newstand, given a perceived booming interest in China's market. However, even though many companies have fled to China, the magazine failed to flourish.
Huang admitted that catering to the interests of Taiwanese readers was a difficult task and added that he was still unsure what their interests really were.
"I have to admit that we failed to give Taiwanese readers what they needed ... Taiwan has tried to ignore China politically, which really affects the media's coverage and in turn Taiwanese are not that interested in learning more about China," Huang said.
According to reports in Chinese-language media, a leading Taiwanese company was originally expected to invest in the magazine, but the plan apparently fell through.
Taiwan's competitive media market has become even tighter as the economy has suffered over the past year.
On April 1, Taiwan's only sports newspaper, Great Sports Daily, closed, citing a lack of interest in Taiwanese baseball and basketball.
One of Taiwan's top three Chinese-language daily, the China Times, dismissed over 100 editors in its Kaohsiung and Taichung offices at the end of May. The dismissed editors have fought for their right to regain their jobs but have so far been unsuccessful. The newspaper is expected to dismiss more employees in the coming months.
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