World Journal

"World Journal" ( _zh. 世界日報; pinyin: shì jiè rì bào, officially known as "Chinese Daily News" in Los Angeles) is a daily Chinese language newspaper serving overseas Chinese in North America. It is published in major cities containing large Chinese-speaking population including Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Houston in the United States as well as Toronto and Vancouver in Canada. The newspaper is widely sold in many Chinatowns in these cities and other predominant Chinese suburbia, in addition to subscription by mail available throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Founded in 1976, the newspaper has the largest circulation among the Chinese American and Chinese Canadian readership. World Journal is owned by the same media conglomerate that runs the "United Daily News" in Taiwan. It is a Taiwanese American-run newspaper and until the mid-1990s was viewed as very hostile to the People's Republic of China, in part because the paper referred to people from mainland China as "communist Chinese." Furthermore, its coverage on mainland China was only an article or so out of dozens of pages / sections.

However, this view has changed rather drastically when the newspaper begun to increase its sections / pages to have much more news coverage on mainland China by increasing the corresponding coverage from the a mere single article to two pages in the main section, following the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989. The rapid shift to neutralism in the early 1990s for its coverage on mainland China was originally in part due to the attempt to obtain more readers among the recent Chinese immigrants, whom mostly were consisted mainland Chinese who benefited from the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989 by obtaining the American green card. The other reason for the rapid shift was rooted in its sympathy to the Chinese democracy movement. The shift was further strengthened from mid-1990s in part due to the new huge wave of the arrival of mainland Chinese immigrants to North America and in part due to political developments on Taiwan where multi-party elections have been allowed.

Like its parent the "United Daily News", the "World Journal" is widely seen as taking an editorial line that favors the pan-Blue coalition and Kuomintang. It is also against the Taiwanese independence ideology of the pan-Green coalition. Consequently, this editorial position has made it much less hostile toward the People's Republic since the 1990s, which appeared in three stages. Immediately after the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989, it no longer indiscriminately regarded all mainland Chinese as "communist Chinese" anymore, and praised the pro-democracy efforts of the mainland Chinese. By the second stage in the mid-1990s, it begun to gave credit to the positive progress made in mainland China, and by the third stage in the late-1990's, it begun to criticize the wrongdoings within the Chinese democracy movement and in the West just like the way it has often criticized the corruptions of the Chinese communist regime. After year 2000, many mainland Chinese immigrants have been becoming part of its reporting staff. The anti-Taiwan independence editorial positions that the paper has taken have also made it popular among mainland Chinese immigrants to the United States.

Labor law violation

On January 10, 2007, a Southern California jury found the Monterey Park-based "Chinese Daily News" responsible of failing to give employees breaks, lunches, and overtime, and awarded the plaintiffs $2.5 million. The plaintiffs alleged that they worked over twelve hours per day, were failed to provide adequate pay statements to workers, and were interfered with unionization attempts. In 2001, the employees voted to join the Communication Workers of America, but the National Labor Relations Board vacated the union vote after finding that the election was tainted. [http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/article.php?id=4241&IssueNum=56]

External links

* [http://www.worldjournal.com World Journal]