Bizcuits | Give us this day our Daily Rag

Leanda Lee

Congratulations to Macau Daily Times upon its Tenth Anniversary, and especially to the current management and editorial team – the longest serving at the paper; you do us proud.

When I first came to Macau a little more than these ten years, there was but one English language daily on the newsstands. Macau was in dire need of a paper with international approach: one that would reach out and respond to the growing expatriate and foreign worker community to help make the conundrums of Macau accessible; one that Macau resident returnees keen to get an English speaking cultural viewpoint on what was happening locally and internationally could turn to; and one that could be relied on to freely open a window on Macau for the global community.

To purport to reach these goals would need a rare combination of journalistic professionalism, strong local networks and in-depth knowledge that comes from at least tri-socio-cultural, if not multi-cultural management and newsroom teams. The Macau Daily Times is now a group of individuals that bring together the different perspectives that reflect its readership. From established Portuguese professionals with long memories of Macau – the old hands – to young mainland Chinese interns and the occasional smattering of Brit and Aussie influence, MDT’s short history has been colourful. We have had joyous and crazily humorous times but also tragic days of heartache when we have lost colleagues: their work lives on in these pages.

Such a diverse group of people working together has its ups and downs. Different ages and professional approaches, different ethnicities, different languages and behaviours, different views about time and deadlines, different ways to accord and acknowledge respect, all in an environment in which there is a constant sense of urgency, create pressure points. From an academic’s perspective where it is not unusual for a paper to take 2 years from writing to publication (rather like the slow-food movement), the under 6-hour turnaround (the fast-food equivalent) that some newspaper articles meet in the process from information gathering from source through drafting, then the editing process, copy-desk review, layout, design and print, all under public scrutiny and criticism shows what people are capable of. Just like the goal-keeper, errors can have irreversible impact and reverberate far and wide but the team has no option but to pick itself up. Tomorrow is another day, another edition. This takes courage.

As if these circumstances are not enough, by need and necessity the majority of those individuals in the MDT newsroom are writing in their second or third language. I tip my hat to each and every one of them.

There are now three English language dailies in the market, each with its own colour and focus and thus not competing to any significant degree. If the international cross-referencing of articles between media outlets and MDT, and the citing of MDT articles by influential analysts is anything to go by, MDT under its most recent leadership has managed to expand its reach and influence as part of the international media community. We should expect to see this continue apace.

Into my eighth year of writing regularly for MDT, first monthly and now fortnightly as contributing editor and critical friend, I have been privy to changes at MDT but more importantly, my attention and that of MDT’s readers has been drawn to the social, political, business and community developments in our Macau home through the prism of MDT’s editorial decisions. It is a crucial role. May it continue.