Telum Talks To… George Liang, Editor-in-Chief, Living Psychology
Interview

Telum Talks To… George Liang, Editor-in-Chief, Living Psychology

"We want to speak for our readers through stories. This is what we have wanted to achieve in our transformational journey." George Liang, Editor-in-Chief of Taiwan's well-established magazine Living Psychology, shared about its revamp and editorial plan.

What is Living Psychology’s target readership? What is your editorial focus?
We focus on readers' own interests and their needs are our needs. Therefore, we often get story ideas from films and TV dramas. Each character and storyline can be a source of inspiration.

Our readers include industry experts, scholars, social workers, teachers and students in colleges, as well as professionals from the public sector and the general public. Our current focus is to expand the readership in the general public. We want to create content that serves our readers’ needs in a real-life setting.

Could you share with us a bit more about this year’s revamp?
Our format may be different now, but we continue to produce stories of the same quality. Now we have fewer, but larger pages. We are now a fully-coloured magazine with a balanced ratio of visual content and text, and more visible headlines. We do hope the modifications have allowed our readers to have a better reading experience and attract more readers.

Fortunately, everyone has noticed these changes. After the revamp, we have received many good comments. And there is a lot of feedback that made us excited. We believe our decisions were correct.

Your coverage includes lifestyle, art and education. How do you put them in the context of mental health?
We invite experts and scholars in relevant fields to tell their stories. Psychology is the study of human beings. Every individual has their own story to tell.

In the beginning, some of our experts and scholars were not quite sure about this approach. It took some time for us to convince them it’s what the readers want – the need to build a connection between readers and the magazine – so that they can resonate with us.

In short, we want to speak for our readers through stories. This is what we have wanted to achieve in our transformational journey.

How should PR practitioners cooperate with you? What characteristics do you care about most when cooperating with a company?
We do not have a particular PR company that we work with. However, we do want more exposure now with so much going on especially we have completely grown into an online and physical service company in the cultural and creative industry recently.

Do you think there is enough awareness and attention to mental health in Taiwan? In what areas do you think the general public should be better educated?
We all know about it, but we don’t necessarily understand it. There are still myths and misinformation out there that we need to debunk. As much as we at Living Psychology want to provide readers with all the answers, there isn’t always one. What we want is to be our readers’ companions in their quest for peace of mind.

This is exactly what we did in our June issue when we took inspiration from the popular Japanese animation film, "Your Name". We discussed the need for mental health on a day-to-day basis and the need to understand ourselves. Who are we? Where are we from? Where are we heading? We want to inspire our readers to find their own answers.

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