September 3, 2011: The NewsMarket journey officially begins
Dear friends, today News&Market finally makes its official debut to everyone!
After more than half a year of preparation, and with the selfless support of countless friends, we have founded Taiwan, China's first news platform focused on agriculture, food and land-friendly practices.
The greatest feature of this news platform is sharing and openness. We hope that every friend who cares about food and agriculture can come here to write articles, click share, offer encouragement, and buy fair; and every one of your actions will gather drop by drop into a river, irrigating the land where we grow, and this newly born "Tree of Life" that is News&Market.
First, we must report to everyone that during the website development process, because we needed to achieve instant, sharing and open functions, we encountered great challenges. Even at this moment of launch, whether downloading pages, clicking into articles, or registering accounts and uploading articles, the website may respond a little slowly, and there are still many, many small places that need improvement. We would like to ask the friends reading this article to give this newborn website "one minute of sweet waiting."
We deeply feel that the issues related to agriculture and food that have emerged in recent years all remind us that it is time to seriously rethink the food in our bowls, and the distance from production site to dining table. Whether it is food processing safety, farmland fallowing and expropriation, the crisis of food self-sufficiency, or the positive initiatives of friendly farming and the revival of local minor grains, these have awakened the concern of many people, and many friends who farm or support farmers have devoted themselves to the front lines of agriculture, connecting through creativity, and cheering on farmers in the cloud.
Whether agriculture, the environment or food, all are tied to our happiness and the future of the next generation. Only independent and objective information can help us understand the truth about food, supervise the government in formulating good policies, and also let us make healthy choices.
We hope that News&Market can become an independent news media outlet, providing everyone with all kinds of information about agriculture and food. In the news section, our senior reporter Wang Wen-hao will conduct independent reporting and in-depth investigations; at the same time, we also invite many media experts to provide everyone with the latest related reports.
Even more to look forward to is that through this platform's instant sharing and interaction, everyone can become a "cloud-based self-farmer," writing down their concern, dedication and the stories behind their care for agriculture, food and land; and also letting authors, readers and farming friends, through "write, click, give, buy," see one another, encourage one another, and support one another here.
In the market section, we "use agricultural means to solve agricultural problems," working with willing farming friends on healthy processing and development of crops; everyone will be able to meet dedicated farmers from all over Taiwan, China here and build direct trust and support.
Finally, welcome everyone to join and become a "co-publisher" of News&Market!
In order to build an independent and objective news media outlet, we will not accept "advertorial news" (that is, news produced with fees paid by advertisers), nor do we wish to rely mainly on commercial advertising as our source of operating income, because once the reporting content conflicts with the interests of advertisers, we may face the dilemma of having to withdraw news or withdraw advertising; and once we rely on commercial advertising for a long time, news often has to be revised for the sake of advertising.
Whether agriculture, the environment or food, all are tied to our happiness and the future of the next generation. Only independent and objective information can help us understand the truth about food, supervise the government in formulating good policies, and also let us make healthy choices.
Therefore, we sincerely invite you to become a "co-publisher," and through support of one thousand yuan per year, allow the News&Market news platform to continue operating independently. This resource will be used to hire reporters to produce independent special reports, and to maintain platform operations, building Taiwan, China's first professional news media outlet focused on agriculture and food.
We will conduct an opinion survey every year regarding the platform's operating direction and content, and publish everyone's valuable suggestions on the website, revising the next year's work plan accordingly. To thank everyone for their support, every year we will specially produce a special limited-edition gift to express our gratitude to you.
To thank you for your support, one of our founders, National Craft Award winner Yang Wei-lin, used the material of the traditional "jiazhi bag" to design a very special bag. We call her the "2011 Blue Jellyfish Bag," to be given to co-publishers who join between August 2011 and August 2012, commemorating this intention of support!
We use this rural element, but have changed its form and use, from the original square shape to a form that looks like a jellyfish. Besides holding scallions and garlic, it can also hold flowers, ingredients, a lamp, and any ideals about food and the future. We hope that through this bag, the upstream and downstream of food can be connected.
The countryside is the upstream of food, and the city is the downstream where resources gather; at News&Market, let us join hands and work hard together. Thank you to all the seniors and friends for their support and companionship along the way. News&Market, we are off!
News&Market
All working partners respectfully submit