After two and a half years in circulation, the evening newspaper Power News (勁晚報) made a surprise announcement yesterday that the paper was shutting down and would stop publishing today.
Power News is Taiwan's second evening newspaper to fold in the last six months.
The announcement was made in a front-page message that appeared in yesterday's issue of the paper.
"Advertising revenue could not keep up with the cost of producing high-quality news and content,'' it said.
The paper said it will give severance pay to its staff in accordance with the Labor Standards Law (
The newspaper's staff said they will not rule out staging protests if the paper fails to give them proper severance pay.
Other papers that closed in recent months include Taiwan's oldest afternoon newspaper, the Independence Evening Post (自立晚報), and Taiwan's only sports paper, The Great Sports Daily (大成體育報).
Power News was launched in July 1999 by the Hsiang Shan group (象山集團), which also owns the cable TV station Power TV and the radio station Power 98.9.
The company said the paper's closure would not affect operations at the TV and radio stations.
Over the past two and a half years, the paper has tried to attract readers with colorful pages and punchy writing. It also lowered its price from NT$15 to NT$10, and later lowered it again to NT$5 per copy.
The Hsiang Shan group has reportedly lost up to NT$1 billion through its media businesses. It also suffered a major blow in September when floods brought by Typhoon Nari destroyed some of the group's media hardware facilities in Taipei City.
The Hsiang Shan group was established by Chiang Tao-sheng (江道生), who rose to fame and wealth with a successful kindergarten chain that now has 22 branches in Taipei City and County.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
RSS