Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Expat Media Sources

Unfortunately, Taipei's only free alternative weekly, POTS, has dropped its English section. If you are limited to the English media, it's really tough to figure out what's going on in Taiwan. The three English papers are extremely biased and/or incompetent, and there's a lot of pressure for English TV and radio to cater to the local English-learner rather than the expat who wants to know what's going on.

Funny how that contrasts with all the stuff in Japan--Metropolis magazine up in Tokyo, Kansai Time Out and Kansai Scene down where I was, a selection of newspapers that were at least error-free.... None of those seems to feel the need to cater to the ESL crowd, either.

I guess that's attributable to the size of the expat population in Japan, obviously, but I think there's an "English fever" in Taiwan that just doesn't exist in Japan.

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