PattayaOneTeam

Thank you for your posts. Today has been very busy so we have only now found the time to respond on this forum.

Although we expected to attract a lot of negative posts, this being our first edition, we are astonished with the more positive numbers today – over 11,000 hits on the Pattaya One topics, over 3,500 individual downloads of the PDF file, and the usual wide array of posters on the various Pattaya One topics which are running.

That’s why we wanted to do this with Thai Visa, because once the dust settles we think the publication will become quickly very popular here in print and online, as well as abroad, and Thai Visa have an excellent global reach.

We are convinced no other Pattaya publication could have pulled this off and it took a leap of faith for Thai Visa to do it with us, so hopefully content-wise we will come up with our end of the bargain.

We are very happy to respond to sensible queries, comments and complaints when we have time, so let us try to answer the ones raised so far:

TCW

News –we simply did not have the space, but we hope from the next edition to cover some local news, in a new style. The bowling feature was a quirky human interest story one of the editors liked!

Magazine or Paper? – We have never asked ourselves that, but we are happy how it has turned out so far, and as we have more space we can expand the content to include news and a lot of high quality content that we can’t use right now, so maybe we will turn out to be a newspaper after all.

Pattaya:One Rainbow – We agree. A superb column from James, and we hope to expand that into a full page when space allows.

Download v hard copy Version – We think they are complementary. And for anyone who is put off from buying it because it is online, good luck to them. Many prefer to read a hard copy paper, but having the online version gives us an excellent global reach.

Boater

Go go adverts – why so many? To be honest, it simply reflects the guaranteed readership that bar owners knew they would get from the hugely popular Nightmarch and Stickman columns. Nothing more.

We want as much advertising as we can get from all areas of Pattaya’s commercial world, and our rates are dramatically lower than Pattaya’s newspapers, yet we have many more eyeballs on the pages, so you should see the proportion of bar ads reduce as we get bigger and obtain more advertising from other areas of Pattaya life.

Hope the above helps, and thank you for your support.

Pattaya One team

Not long to go now. Just checking this forum actually works and isn't an elaborate wind-up by Thai Visa!

Hi Farma,

Your comment that the writing style:

" ...suggests the information contained in the article was overheard in a pub."

knowing who wrote it, you may be right.

However, the article was written in our house style, and we weren't prepared to change it. We aren't a "newspaper" as such, and certainly not a serious one, but we are happy for other publications to take our stories and to write them more seriously, as we focus on entertaining our readers and primarily reflecting life in Pattaya.

Although we agree it may look a bit odd put up as a (surprisingly popular) Thai Visa news item, if you read the paper, you will see it in context.

We hope our readers will enjoy the paper as much as we have enjoyed compiling it. We are lucky to have the best writers and columnists in Thailand writing for us.

Best wishes,

Pattaya One Team

A step in the right direction. Do we still get to see all the insensitive gory photos like we did before?

Will the standard of journalism improve. The latest overstay story has serious implications for some people and should at least appear credible.

However quotes like these

handing over the wedge

the correct amount of folding stuff

suggests the information contained in the article was overheard in a pub.

Hi Farma,

Knowing the people who cobbled it together, it might have been.

However the real reason it is written so colloquially, is that we are writing it in our house style, and we weren't prepared to change it.

It will make more sense if and when you see the rest of the paper, but we take your point in the context of a formal (and so far surprisingly well-read) press article in Thai Visa!

If others want to pick up on our stories and investigate and report more formally, we are only too happy for them to do so, leaving us to better-focus on the more entertaining aspects of life in Pattaya City.

(Un?)fortunately given space requirements and last minute advertisers, we couldn't put half the content we wanted in the first edition, but we are very confident what we do have will not disappoint.

However there is not much news content, as we take the view that it is well covered by all the other papers, and Thai Visa, and other Pattaya websites and news outlets.

When space allows we will be doing some crime reporting, but more in the nature of commentary and updates where this is possible.

We sincerely hope you will check us out.

Best wishes,

Pattaya One.