THE RESURGANCE OF ENGLISH PRINT MEDIA
How many English newspapers and magazines are there in Thailand?
If you include the various newspaper supplements, regional weeklies, free ad magazines and established titles there's probably close to 40. There's no central database of publications in Thailand so there's no way to know for sure.
If you Google 'English Media in Thailand' you get a whole host of, quite frankly, useless and outdated information. Metro, Farang and Thai Day disappeared more than two years ago yet they feature prominently on most search results.
I'm working on a useful and current database of English media in Thailand which should be finished later this week. I'll post details here as soon as it's done.
11 comments:
Why is it, do you think, that there are so many English publications in Thailand? Are they directed at the expat and tourist communities, or is there something more complex behind it?
Hi David.
I think there are a number of reasons. Firstly, a number of native English journalists find their way to Thailand and establish their own magazines. I guess it's every journalists dream to have their own publication, even though writing experience counts for nothing when you need your magazine to make money.
You've also got the prestige factor of English within the Thai population. I think the Bangkok Post has something like 75-80% Thai readership. The same goes for the imported magazines like Time and Newsweek.
Yes, you've got a lot (probably too many) magazines aiming directly at the expat community but I don't think there is one magazine that's doing a good job of getting to the tourists. Bangkok101 is probably the closest to achieving it but needs, in my humble opinion, more marketing and distribution outside of the Kingdom.
What do you think David (and others)? How often do you buy or read a Thailand-based English magazine?
A reader from Phuket emailed me to suggest my 'English Media in Thailand' website should include online publications.
If you have any other suggestions please feel free to commment here or email me.
I tended to limit myself to Bangkok Post and The Economist. Most of the English print was either touristy (read: Ads) or was made up of stuff copied verbatim from other sources from several months back. I always enjoyed the Thai media more, especially Baan Lae Suan and any of the gossip rags, which were always entertaining.
"What do you think David (and others)? How often do you buy or read a Thailand-based English magazine?"
I read every issue of the two short-lived local publications for tourists in Chiang Rai.
The founder of the first ran away with the advertisers' money. The second seems to have been founded by local university students and had nice photos but indecipherable English.
Content quality is a big problem. Seems like a good blog with photos about Chiang Rai (or any other locality) would have provided a good foundation for quality content: what it's like living there, places to go, things to see, photos to take, etc...
Jon. Thanks for your comment.
I agree with you about the content issue, and that's actually one of the reasons I ended up in Thailand. My company needed someone to English edit the English content of two magazines.
I think the key to a successful Thailand-based English publication (besides the quality issue) is to provide something you cannot get online. That's both in terms of content and readership for advertisers.
I think this discussion is going to form the basis for a forthcoming blog post: what do you (as a native English-speaking person living in Thailand) want from a magazine? Perhaps there's no real market for magazines anymore because everyone gets so much information from the web?
Bangkok101 is OK, but it doesn't have up-to-date events listings, and too much content is repeated every month.
I think the Bangkok Post has decent coverage of national news, and some original feature articles, though it still relies too much on agencies and reprints. Its Guru magazine is nowhere near as good as BK.
Mat.
"what do you (as a native English-speaking person living in Thailand) want from a magazine?"
I'd want current content about what is going on in Thailand, from politics to archeology. As an expat, perhaps something about what motivates the Thai mind to do things like democracy demonstrations that from the farang point of view are actually anti-democratic. Direct translations from Thai newspapers, rather than western-digested views of the news of the day. One of the reasons 2bangkok is popular is that very thing: It's Thailand from mostly Thai eyes in a readable format. Unfortunately, it is also a supreme example of what is killing print today: Flexibility, speed, and relevance, not to mention cost-effectiveness.
How many hits do you have? How much would it cost to reach that number of people in print?
Matthew.I totally agree with everything you say. 101 is aiming at tourists so they don't expect a large number of readers each and every month, as I understand. That's why there is a significant amount of repeated content.
David. An interesting wants list and excellent point about 2Bangkok.
The questions regarding hits online and readers in print is a good one too and worthy of a follow-up post. What I will say here and now is that for a majority of advertisers here in Thailand print still rules. Until that changes it's always going to be hard to make a successful business totally online.
The Bangkok Buggle said: "Perhaps there's no real market for magazines anymore because everyone gets so much information from the web?"
Print and online might be complements rather than substitute goods in some respects. For one, there seem to still be a lot of people who still don't do much reading online and the kind of reading they do might be more superficial than with a print publication.
The precision and ease of web traffic monitoring might make online a lower cost alternative for marketing research for a print publication in the works. Online might be useful also for prototyping a print publication and getting it up to speed. But what in Thailand there seems to be more publications that have gone from paper to web than vice versa like Krasaehoon (Stock Wave).
There seems to be a disconnect between advertisers and the readers. Newspapers are failing because of falling profits linked to readership, and therefore advertising. But it seemed to me that there was a lag between when print became threatened by online content, and when advertising noticed. From the laymans view, it was as though advertising was pumping money into print because it simply didn't know how to make money online.
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