NINE MONTHS ON, STILL GOING STRONG

It's nine months almost to the hour since I arrived in Bangkok. Looking back I've certainly come a long way in terms of my career and what I have achieved. If someone had told me one year ago that I would be doing the things I am doing now I would have told them there were crazy. To go from working as chief photographer at The Wokingham Times to heading the launch of a global business magazine is pretty awesome. The thing is, I know I can do it. I'm using all the experience and knowledge gained in the last 16 years, and because Thailand is behind in terms of the development of the media I can anticipate what is coming next.
What I mean by that are things like digital editions. In North America and Europe they are very much the 'in' thing, but in Thailand the concept hardly exists. Another example is media auditing. Only a couple of magazine and one newspaper are audited, but the industry is going to demand that transparency in the next couple of years. We will be ready and ahead of the curve, so to speak.
The hardest thing is find the staff who understand the way things are heading, and understand the high standards that are required. I've said before that the Thai media industry is corrupt, and although that's a massive generalisation it's true. There are very, very few publications you can truly trust to bring you unbiased and uninfluenced reporting. I'm happy to say that our new magazine will be one of them.