Nation reveals its plans today:
The launch of Daily Xpress, Thailand's first-ever freesheet newspaper, to be published in English with a compact form, will take place along with the transformation of The Nation into a paper with a firm focus on in-depth business and political coverage.
The changes, which will start on March 5, are meant to better serve our readers, who we regard as smart, daring, knowledge-able, and tech savvy. Thanks to a thorough survey of media in Thailand we know that our readers are exactly that and we have planned the changes accordingly.
About 100,000 copies of the freesheet will be distributed daily including to all current and future Nation subscribers, making it the largest-circulated English daily newspaper in Thailand.
Tulsathit Taptim will be editor of Daily Xpress. The Nation's managing editor, Thanong Khanthong, will replace Tulsathit as editor of The Nation.
"The younger generation of sophisticated readers is a largely unfufilled or untapped market as far as English language media is concerned. And we hope Daily Xpress, with a focus on lifestyle, human interest news, talk of the town events, entertainment and fun, will help serve their needs for a new kind of media," said Tulsathit.
I saw a preview copy of Xpress and it was pretty impressive in terms of how much copy was in it. Xpress staff will have a lot of content to write on a daily basis. I hope they can sustain that. Might be worth a read now and then.
We were all wondering what was going to happen to The Nation once Xpress is launched and I guess now we have an answer. We’ll see how it works out.
This opens up all kinds of possibilities for writers, both expats and Thai, to liven up the face of local story reporting, and I hope the many talented farangs in Thailand get a chance to publish their stories. I find that blogs and forums such as Thai Visa often have better insight into what's the pulse of Thailand than the mainstream publications, so hopefully XPress will get the message and open their paper to local talent. And I hope their website is very, very interactive to allow everyone to have a voice, something Thailand really needs right now.
I have not seen a copy but am looking forward to next week. I'm not aware they've employed any additional staff for this project so it will be interesting to see how much content will be lifted from elsewhere – such as agency copy and the like.
I can't see they will want to throw money at this (in terms of 'farang' salaries) until they are sure it will work. And that's the big question. Do Thai people – their self-confessed target for this new publication – want their news in English? My own experience that, given the choice, Thai people will read a Thai publication.
It should be interesting to see what happens. Anything new in the Thai publishing world is a gamble in one form or another.
The first issue yesterday was quite impressive – as you say, an impressive quantity of content. I think there will be a Thai audience for it, considering the 80 per cent Thai readership of BK in Bangkok. I wonder how popular The Nation will be, though, now that it has drastically changed itself into a business paper.