New English Daily with Local Identity

By Liana Wong

The Macau Post Daily, whose first issue came out on August 27, represents a new effort to have a locally owned and produced English newspaper which could fully identify with Macau's unique way of life.

Published daily and distributed internationally, the newspaper reports current events in the city, providing visitors and the outside world with most updated information about Macau. The Everbright Co. Ltd is the publisher and the investor of the newspaper.

Harald Bruning, Director of the newly established daily newspaper, said that Macau needs an English press as it is getting more international and English is a universal language. Some visitors have problems to know more about Macau because the official languages of Macau are Chinese and Portuguese.

According to Bruning, one of the Macau Post Daily's target audiences is non-Chinese reading business investors and visitors. By reading the newspaper they can learn the terms used in English about Macau. Therefore, it is much easier for them when they do business or commercials in the city. Moreover, there are many visitors and investors from different countries with different languages coming to Macau. An English newspaper could serve as a tool of common communication that is needed among visitors, investors and local residents.

Bruning said, "By reading this newspaper, which means by reading its news articles or editorials, visitors can know more about Macau."

Bruning, who first came to Hong Kong from Germany in 1979 and worked in an international press agency and Hong Kong Standard for 25 years, moved to Macau in 1985. He also contributes a special column on Macau for the South China Morning Post, which appears every Wednesday.

However, Bruning said that Hong Kong English newspapers have their own agendas and do not identify with Macau. They tend to do selective reporting of what happens in Macau.

He said that Hong Kong newspapers have their perspectives and actually they don't care about Macau. They write about Macau like a foreign country. They have no connections with Macau. So the aim of his newspaper is to convey the Macau perspective and let visitors understand more about the real nature of Macau.

In the past few years, there had been a couple of endeavours to set up an English newspaper in Macau, the Macau Express before 1999 and the New Macau Times in 2002. Both of them were English weeklies, but neither lasted more than a year. Bruning explained that his paper is different from the weeklies. A weekly newspaper runs like a magazine, but a daily newspaper can provide information in the most updated fashion.