By Eryk Michael Smith.
One year ago today, Kaohsiung Times officially launched with a fairly simple idea: Southern Taiwan deserved more regular, serious English-language news coverage.
Kaohsiung Times remains a work in progress, but looking back after only one year, the amount of progress we have made is honestly a little surprising. I want to single out the management of Second Space for special appreciation: they developed the website, helped with social media, and continue to explore new ways technology can aid a very small team to survive and thrive.
What began as a new and largely untested publication has found readers across Taiwan and around the world. People have read our stories, shared them, and commented on them.
That participation has helped shape the paper. Some readers have sent story ideas. Others have offered photographs, translations, introductions, or suggestions about how we could explain Southern Taiwan more accurately. Writers and contributors have trusted us with their work. Even the minor criticisms we’ve gotten have been useful, as they’ve been mostly constructive critiques.
We are grateful to the Kaohsiung City Government and Pingtung County Government for their cooperation, responsiveness, and willingness to help us obtain information. We also appreciate the support and confidence shown by private companies such as M1 International, civic organizations, and foundations.
That cooperation does not determine what we report or how we report it. It does, however, make it possible for a small publication to ask better questions, reach the right people and provide readers with more complete information.
Most of all, we thank the people who have embraced the idea behind Kaohsiung Times.
Southern Taiwan is not a footnote to events elsewhere on the island; it is not a part of “Chinese Taipei” (I jest, but jokes about the capital acting as the “Celestial Kingdom” are based on reality; or at least I think they are).
This city, and the greater Southern Taiwan region, has its own political debates, industries, communities, environmental challenges, cultural life, and changing identity. Our purpose has been to report those stories in English for people who live here, people elsewhere in Taiwan, and people overseas who want to understand this part of the country.
We have not done everything perfectly, and one year is far too early to declare victory. But we have published hundreds of stories, built relationships throughout the region, and established something that did not exist in quite this form before.
To everyone who has read, written, commented, shared, contributed, encouraged, or quietly returned to the site: thank you.
The first year gave Kaohsiung Times a foundation. We intend to keep building on it.
Appreciatively,
Eryk Michael Smith
Editor-in-Chief, Kaohsiung Times
