Hard-Pressed--Taiwan's Newspapers Battle for Readers

Published: July 1997
Source: Sinorama
By: Teng Sue-feng

After 40 years of newspaper publishing in the ROC on Taiwan, it was only in 1988 that the law was changed to allow new competitors into the market. Some have described the print media market since then as "the war drums pound, everyone is ready for battle." In the last ten years, how has Taiwan's newspaper situation changed? Who have been the winners?

As we march toward the era of electronic media, the traditional newspaper industry faces an unprecedented challenge. It is said that at meetings of newspaper brass, common topics of discussion include: Where is the future market for newspapers? Is this a sunset industry?

The main culprits causing newspaper publishers to feel panicky are familiar: the rising price of paper worldwide; economic downturns; and constantly improving electronic technology, so that newspapers find it harder and harder to be as timely as TV or radio. The biggest problem of all is that readership is dwindling.

Getting nervous

The decline in newspaper readership seems to be a global phenomenon.

According to wire service reports, sales of newspapers are falling worldwide. In the last five years, they have dropped 4.2% in the EU and 5.3% in the US.

In Taiwan, according to the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting, and Statistics, in 1986 there were 75 newspaper subscriptions for every 100 households. Today the number is 60. Since the lifting of the ban on new newspapers in 1988, the number of choices available to people has increased greatly. But that does not mean that the time people devote to media has increased. Satellite TV, electronic newspapers, and the Internet have all taken a bite out of readership.

Newspaper publishers certainly have more things to worry about today than they did ten years back.

The Association of Taiwan Journalists, in cooperation with Super TV, once produced a series of programs on the media's performance, called "Striking Fear into the Media." In a special program on January 21, 1996, the eighth anniversary of the lifting of the ban on new newspapers, they examined how the newspaper situation has changed.

Jung Fu-tien, assistant editor-in-chief at the China Times, and Hu Wen-hui, Jung's counterpart at the Liberty Times, both agree that when the ban was still in effect, the greatest external pressure newspapers faced was political. In those days, though reporters often wrote articles critical of government policies, many could not be published, but could serve only as "internal reference."

Veteran journalist Yang Hsien-hung offers one example: It was 1986, on the day that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was established in defiance of a government ban on new political parties. The reporter at the United Daily News had finished his story and handed it in to the editorial desk. The ruling KMT's Department of Cultural Affairs called the editor to express concern, and asked that the story not be published. The paper waffled, finally agreeing that if their main rival, the China Times, did not carry the story, the UDN wouldn't either. Yang thought that the story would end up in the garbage. But 20 minutes later the KMT called back, saying that the China Times was determined to carry the story no matter what. Only then did the UDN editors retrieve the story from oblivion; it was carried the next day on page two.

Less daring over time?

Heavy-handed political pressure caused many journalists to support the political opposition. Jung Fu-tien recalls how when DPP legislator Kang Ning-hsiang asked him to be the editor-in-chief at Kang's new Capitol Morning Post, he agreed after thinking it over for only ten minutes. The reporters at this opposition-run newspaper were mainly recruited from amongst dissatisfied staff at the main (generally pro-government) newspapers.

"At that time our thinking was that we wanted to have a newspaper completely different from the two majors [China Times and UDN]," says Yang Hsien-hung, who became assistant editor-in-chief at the Capitol Morning Post. "Everyone felt ecstatic-finally we had a place where we could speak our minds."

People in the media thought that, once the political pressure they long feared was gone, their worries would be over. Is that really what has happened?

"In the time of the ban on new newspapers [when there was heavy indirect censorship] you only had to worry about two agencies in handling the news-the Taiwan Garrison Command and the KMT Department of Cultural Affairs," says a high-ranking manager at the UDN. But since the lifting of the ban and the easing of censorship, everybody has become their own Department of Cultural Affairs. If the subject of any report is dissatisfied, even if there is nothing wrong in the story, there is "incoming fire." Once some people even organized a campaign to convince people not to read the UDN. He can't help but sigh: "I've been an editor for 20 years, and the longer I do it the less daring I get."

Chang Jung-kuei, a researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the Academia Sinica, says that after escaping the political interference of the authoritarian era, Taiwan's newspapers began deciding their orientation by listening to market demand.

Chang divides newspapers into two categories. One includes the China Times and UDN. In the closed-market era, they built up dominant positions, and accumulated a great deal of capital. The other type has arisen since political liberalization and the rise of Taiwanese consciousness. This type of paper-which includes the Liberty Times and the Independence Post group-has found its market niche by paying special attention to the problem of Taiwanese identity. "Taiwanization" and "localization" are the main marketing points for these papers.

Political bias in new forms

"Newspapers, a cultural industry, provide newly rising capitalists and political forces with opportunities to enhance their influence," says Chang. News reports are affected by the marketing interests and political connections of each individual paper. He says that for most papers, political orientation becomes most obvious in stories related to "provincial identity"-the problem of relations between Taiwanese and mainland Chinese.

Take for example coverage of a demonstration in January 1993, held by two groups (mostly those opposed to "Taiwanese consciousness") to "Support the Lee-Hau System; Support Another Term as Premier for Hau Pei-tsun." After comparing the headlines and contents of the various newspapers, Chang discovered that the Taiwanese-oriented Liberty Times emphasized negative themes such as "the situation was disorderly," and "the demonstration won little public support." In follow-up commentaries the paper was critical of the demonstrators. Meanwhile, the special report by the UDN implicitly supported the marchers, the China Times offered no commentary, and the Youth Daily News (published by the Ministry of Defense) gave the story the least space, noting only that the demonstrators were orderly and law-abiding.

In terms of estimates of the number of marchers, in the absence of objective standards, the Liberty Times estimated 5-10,000 people, the Independence Morning Post said 3,000-plus, both the UDN and China Times said about 10,000, and the Youth Daily News went as far as 100,000.

Nan Fang Shuo, a veteran observer of Taiwan's media scene, reckons that the first eight years after the lifting of censorship constituted a "golden age" for newspapers. "In those days there were still different factions within the KMT, and no one was in full control. Since there was no single force that newspaper publishers had to, or could, play up to, speech was basically free," he says.

However, after the presidential election, one group became dominant, and newspaper owners began to get nervous. Nan Fang Shuo divides Taiwan's newspapers since then into three "modes." "The first is the front-line hit man of the powers-that-be, whose use of language is often extreme. Another type is one with bad relations with the powers-that-be. Their editorials also tend to be vicious. The third type doesn't known where to go, today lining up with this side, tomorrow with that." In his view, none of these types entails a careful and dignified appeal to reason.

"Asian societies have traditionally had authoritarian politics. Politicians are not used to having the media challenge them, and the media is always making sure not to offend the politicians. In the face of political power, Taiwan's society is very weak," he argues.

Elite vs. mass consumption

While political factors have by no means disappeared, meanwhile, commercial pressures have been added. Before the lifting of the ban on new newspapers, there were 29 Chinese-language papers in Taiwan. A few years later there were more than 200. By the end of 1994 the figure had fallen to 126.

Not only has the number of competitors expanded, but readers can very clearly "feel" the expansion, because the number of pages has also increased continually. Under the old system, newspapers could only have 12 pages. The number has since shot up to 24, 32, 48, or even 60. Half of this space goes to advertising.

In the history of Chinese newspapers, there was an era of "literati-run" broadsheets, with Liang Qichao's paper being representative. They cared only about whether the articles were meaningful, not how well the paper sold, so publication was limited. Now publishing a newspaper is a big business, and operators are under pressure to maximize publication volume and advertising revenues.

Chiang Ching-fang, director of the planning team at the Cultural News Center of the China Times, once wrote an article describing how the "family and lifestyle" pages of newspapers have changed in the new era. "Feeling the controlling effects of the market," she says, this section is no longer as "soft" as it once was.

In recent years the fastest growing area has been advertising for leisure and travel. In recent years, people from Taiwan have taken over five million trips abroad per year. To meet changing market demand, newspapers have aggressively altered their formats to put travel stories, once not very important, into the paper every day.

Chiang points out that commercial motives lie behind much of what one sees in the sections on travel, family, women, entertainment, consumer affairs, and other "soft" news. What she means is that most of the space devoted to these subjects depends not only on advertising, but on press conferences and PR releases provided by companies and advertising firms. "Compared to the reporters doing politics and economics, who have to chase down stories, family-and-lifestyle reporters are even more in the business of manufacturing news," she says.

D'Orsay vs. Domingo

Beyond the expansion of commercial information, cultural and arts news has also changed its former format of simply reporting on events. Now newspapers are actively involved themselves. Because major cultural events can attract a lot of people, the competition between newspapers has also been extended into this area.

China Times reporter Huang Chih-chuan recalls that in 1990 his paper, in cooperation with Cathay Insurance, sponsored a live outdoor broadcast of a concert by the Italian singer Luciano Pavoratti. That night the plaza of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, where the screening was held, was jammed with thousands of people. This event "defined a new approach" for arts and cultural activities.

Thereafter, newspapers were behind a number of important cultural activities, including the Jos* Carreras solo concert, the revival of the Cloud Gate Dance Company, Yang Li-hua's first performance in the National Theater, a Monet exhibition, and a showing of holdings from the Louvre.

To cite more recent examples: The China Times and the National Museum of History cooperated to hold a show of 19th-century French impressionist paintings from the Musée d'Orsay. The UDN, in cooperation with the International New Aspect Cultural and Educational Foundation, sponsored an unprecedented "concert under the stars" at the CKS Memorial Hall which included Placido Domingo and Jos* Carreras, with US pop star Diana Ross. Both events overflowed with spectators, in part because the papers played them up so much.

As Huang Chih-chuan puts it, "When it comes to sponsoring some big international event, the competition between the newspapers is like fighting over a bride." To "keep up the mood," newspapers offer frequent detailed updates. It's just that, "newspapers have a fixed layout. If they give first priority to their own events, the space for other cultural activities will be correspondingly reduced."

On the other hand, it seems like there is an unwritten rule in Taiwan's newspaper industry that, in order to avoid enhancing the reputation of a competitor, papers don't write about a competitor's event unless they absolutely can't avoid it. And when papers report on their own events, they give them heavy coverage; whatever the quality of the event, it is unlikely anything negative will appear.

Publishing war

Beyond the commercial pressures on newspaper priorities, the disorder of the market is something else those in the business didn't expect.

Whereas in Hong Kong papers have engaged in a price-slashing war, in Taiwan the newspaper market has been a "contest to give away free prizes." There is an ongoing struggle pitting the financial and human resources of the papers against each other. Before the lifting of the ban on new newspapers, while papers did some sales promotions, they did not appeal directly to readers, but just tried to recruit dealers. In the new era, it is no longer a question of "whether or not" newspapers offer promotions, but only of "how much."

At the beginning of the 1990s, the China Times led the way with its drawing for 1000 taels of gold to "pay back our readers." The UDN then gave away NT$20 million in its drive to "thank our readers." The war for market share had begun.

In 1992, the Liberty Times carried an ad offering NT$120 million "to repay our readers." Prizes included 6000 taels of gold, 20 Mercedes Benz automobiles, 100 off-road vehicles, and 1000 motorcycles, in a drawing open to anyone subscribing for a half year or more. By 1994, promotional budgets had reached unprecedented sizes. The first prize in one NT$500 million giveaway was a suburban home worth NT$30 million.

A "keeping up with the Joneses" mindset took hold, and everyone felt "it would be wrong not to offer promotions." Many newspapers followed suit, offering cars, air conditioners, computers, you name it, you got it. . . . drawings for gold, CD ROM units, and cash appeared one after the other.

Come and get it

The dazzling promotions are all designed to attract new readers. But readers can't understand how newspapers can afford these sales strategies. In one promotion, anyone ordering a three-year subscription for NT$16,000 could buy an NT$32,000 motorcycle for half price. That's like buying the motorcycle and getting three years of newspapers for free. So where do the papers make their profits?

The planning and research department at the UDN says that the wisdom behind promotions is that they get the cash up front. Normally, subscription fees are collected at the end of each month. When a subscriber moves or goes abroad, the money can't be collected, so the newspapers have to be written off as given away for free.

Long-term subscribers, on the other hand, pay before they get their papers. The UDN "333" promotion (offering a three-year subscription and a motorcycle for NT$33,300) got 47,000 long-term subscribers. After deducting the NT$20,000 plus per household paid to the motorcycle factory, that still left more than NT$100 million on which UDN can earn interest, not to mention saving the cost of hiring people to collect the monthly fees.

For the firms providing the prizes, working with a newspaper allows them to raise their public profile and market share without having to spend money on advertising. It also brings future repair and parts business.

"Giving away large gifts with subscriptions is a surrender to reality," says one manager at UDN. Vicious competition in the media market means that papers must offer gifts to get readers. He feels this is a "tragedy for journalists."

"Of course the promotions are effective," stress people in the advertising business, "if promotions were ineffective, advertising wouldn't exist in the first place." The promotions at the Liberty Times, which may look like they were done in disregard of costs, not only increased the paper's fame, they led to a rapid increase in publication volume. As a result of a series of promotion campaigns, the paper claimed that publication had reached 600,000 by 1994.

Seizing command

Although all newspapers do promotions to some extent, "basically, it's a war among three papers," says Bessie Lee, media director at J. Walter Thompson. Last year, in a survey of readership by Survey Research Taiwan, for the first time the Liberty Times surpassed the China Times and the UDN; the Liberty Times promptly claimed to be Taiwan's largest newspaper. "That was like a declaration of war for the other two papers, and it would be impossible for them not to fight back," she says.

As circulation rose, the Liberty Times-citing a survey by the World College of Journalism and Communications-said that their publication volume had reached one million. In an editorial last June 3, the Liberty Times declared that "the era of the two majors is over."

The China Times was not about to sit still for that. The next day, in a headline across page three, it stressed that the China Times was first in newsstand purchases and advertising volume. Citing a survey by Mingchuan College, it declared that it was the paper most trusted by graduates of departments of journalism and mass communications. Then the UDN retorted: Citing studies by five agencies, it declared that it had long had the highest readership. Smoke from the war between the newspapers was settling thick and fast on their newssheets.

"In this kind of competition, which includes not only newspapers, everybody wants to have something desirable to say about themselves. They decide what to say based on what measurements they look at," says Tan Tsu-wei of Survey Research Taiwan.

Tan, who surveys Taiwan's media scene year in and year out for advertisers, says that another reason why the Liberty Times has been able to grow in recent years is its policy not to raise prices. At the end of 1996, in the face of rising paper prices, both the China Times and UDN raised the cost of a newspaper from NT$10 to NT$15. But the Liberty Times did not follow suit, and its low-price policy has shown definite results.

In need of an ABC lesson?

As the debate still raged over which newspaper was number one, in March the ROC Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) held a press conference to announce that beginning in July it would begin auditing the circulation claims of Taiwan's newspapers, tossing a new variable into the industry.

In the past circulation was treated as top-secret information. Naturally firms looking to advertise wanted an objective figure in order to judge how effective their advertising might be.

As far as readers are concerned, circulation figures are not especially meaningful. But for the papers themselves, such figures control their lifeline-advertising income. Simply put: no circulation, no adverts.

According to figures released by Rainmaker Incorporated, in 1995 and 1996, advertising brought in roughly NT$6.3 billion to the China Times, and about NT$6.2 billion to the UDN. Growth over those two years was virtually nil. Although the advertising revenues at the Liberty Times trailed the other two by about NT$5 billion, they had grown by 94%-from NT$600 million to over NT$1.1 billion-since 1994, giving it the highest rate of growth by far.

Currently, the problem is that "there are no rules of the game. Just looking at circulation tricks to expand or maintain sales, apart from giving discounts, giving papers away for free is also common," suggests mass communications scholar Hsu Chia-shih. There is no mutual trust in the newspaper industry, and there is no objective standard to determine "number of newspapers sold." That is why they are so chilly toward the ABC.

"There are two main motives for operating a newspaper-profit and political influence," avers Luo Wen-hui, chairman of the Department of Journalism at National Chengchih University. Most scholars oppose the idea of newspapers being run by large corporations, because for such corporations journalism is not their main field. For them, media is just a tool to expand their influence.

But others believe that readers are clear-headed. If newspapers give up their status as "public instruments" and become "private instruments" only serving to promote some corporation, they will not find any market. In particular, since the liberalization of the electronic media, which cable channel doesn't have the backing of some wealthy and powerful corporate group? Yet, who would say that the cable TV news is any worse? In a capitalist society, any product that relies on the market mechanism to exist cannot avoid being commercial.

The media's role as "social conscience" makes its commercial nature "a little embarrassing." Without taking the market into account, they cannot survive. But, "it takes very expert skills to be able to balance between being a product and serving the public," says Luo Wen-hui.

Room for small papers?

In a decade, Taiwan's newspaper market has entered an era of high capital concentration, and it is increasingly difficult for those with little money to enter the field.

"Those who want to compete must have their own approach," says Nan Fang Shuo. Local papers must have local character. The headline of a Kaohsiung newspaper should be about Kaohsiung. They cannot aspire to competing with the majors for readership or advertising revenues.

Huangfu Ho-wang notes that a number of papers in central and southern Taiwan, such as Kaohsiung's Commons Daily and Tainan's China Daily News, all have long histories. But they still are of only limited size. The main problem is that local papers still follow the political and economic situation in Taipei, and of course there they can't compete with the majors.

Huangfu Ho-wang argues that Taiwan is small, and densely populated, and communications and travel are easy, so there are not very clear regional identities. Thus the space for local newspapers is squeezed further.

If local papers are not doing so well, what about specialty papers?

Beginning in May, the Great News, specializing in "soft" subjects, tore its paper into two information products-one for entertainment and one for sports, selling each for NT$5. Readers can just buy the part they are interested in, or buy both.

Huangfu has reservations about this niche market strategy. He says that in both sports and entertainment there are idols young people admire, and "young readers most likely overlap." Moreover, a paper comes out daily, but sports comes and goes in season; when the season is over, how can they produce a daily paper?

"First it is necessary to remember that a newspaper is a form of mass media, and relies on a mass audience. Moreover, life has a lot of dimensions, and readers will only be satisfied if they can have a little bit of every kind of information," says Nan Fang Shuo. A truly mass paper will have politics, economics, and lifestyle information. Min Sheng Daily News, a mainly sports and entertainment daily which a foreign visitor once described as "a newspaper without the news," has alone been able to survive as a specialty paper because it also includes "lifestyle" information that attracts a readership larger than a typical specialty paper (though still much smaller than a general paper).

Historically, only economic and financial news specialty papers-like the Wall Street Journal from the US, Britain's Financial Times, and Japan's Nikkei Shimbun-seem to have been able to develop successfully.

The biggest enemy

In Taiwan, where general papers dominate, there is still a competitive war going on. In the short run, it is unlikely that there will be any slacking off in the promotion battles.

Many people are tolerant. After all, in Europe and the US the newspaper industry has 200 years of free competitive development behind it; Taiwan has had only a decade. In duplicating the same process that took others centuries, it's not surprising that there are problems.

"For most products, competition improves quality while lowering the price. But newspapers are different. The more intense the competition, the more inflammatory the contents," says Huangfu Ho-wang. Taking the US as an example, he says that though the US population is more than ten times that of Taiwan, the largest newspaper has a circulation of only 1.8 million. "Why should papers in Taiwan be dissatisfied with their current circulation? What level will the competition reach before it finally ends?" he wonders.

In the eyes of many observers, the biggest enemy of Taiwan's newspaper industry is not the dazzling electronic media. It is a principle of history that when a new form of media appears, the old media become fearful. But no form of media has ever disappeared. Newspapers still have many strengths: they are inexpensive and easy to buy, they can be read whenever the user has time, and they offer a wide variety of information in a short time.

"The newspaper industry has been developing for 200 years, so one can reach certain conclusions," says Chengchih University journalism professor Chen Shih-min: They should not take sides politically, should not be tools for private gain, and should not be incendiary. "No one can kill the newspaper industry, except the industry itself, through vicious competition," he says. The words of Pogo, an American newspaper comic character, may well be what newspaper people will come to see: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."