In activities we hold at colleges or arts events, we are often asked, "How do you select your subjects?" Many readers have long wondered the same thing.

Indeed, I suspect that every editor has been asked such a question. There is no standard or "correct" answer. It all depends on the type of magazine, its purpose, its ideals, and its practical limitations. Every editor does the best she or he can within these parameters.

At Sinorama, we have readers in Taiwan and around the world, some reading Chinese, some English, some Japanese, some Spanish, and some more than one! It might seem hard to say anything definite about our readership, but in fact, thanks to your letters and to responses to our surveys, we can say that our readers have a number of things in common, and that these characteristics are not far removed from the original target audience.

Most importantly, wherever they are and whatever their mother tongue, our readers care deeply about Taiwan. They want to know everything about Taiwan-political trends, economic development, social phenomena, arts movements, historical roots. . . . They are not satisfied with just the daily press, nor are they satisfied with just one particular subject like finance or technology. They have a long-term general interest in Taiwan.

Most of our readers are well-informed, with a focus in the humanities or social sciences. From our surveys, and from the requests we get from abroad to reprint articles or photos, we know that many of our readers are interested in topics that are shunned by many "popular" magazines, such as archaeology, history, traditional culture, agriculture, urban development, and so on. These are the concerns of people who want to approach Taiwan on a deeper intellectual level.

On the one hand we are limited in the amount of space we have by our dual-language format and the costs of international mailing. Yet our readers demand depth and comprehensiveness in the stories. Thus in choosing feature topics we place great emphasis on digesting and trimming the information at hand to present as complete a story as we can that is still easy to comprehend within a reasonably short period of time. Even for major topics, usually no more than four articles are needed to cover the story adequately.

In contrast, we are less concerned with coverage of the daily news or local celebrities in Taiwan, and we are not interested in the over-used magazine format of "well-known personalities give us a sound bite on topic X." Anyway, being a monthly magazine, by the time we reach our overseas readers, speculative stories of only short-term interest would already be old news. So we look at the bigger picture. For example, in our story in January on the provincial government, we eschewed coverage of personalities and focused on how the elimination of the provincial government reflects changing political identity in Taiwan, and what will happen to the functions of the provincial government in the future.

So what kinds of topics should we cover as our special features? They should be important subjects having great social impact which cannot be covered in a single article. Take for example this month's cover story on the police. In recent years a number of serious crimes have shaken Taiwan society-the execution-style murder of Taoyuan County magistrate Liu Pang-you, the murder of Peng Wan-ju, director of the department of women's affairs at the Democratic Progressive Party, and the kidnap-murder of Pai Hsiao-yen, daughter of a TV celebrity. The police have come under close scrutiny. Problems of corruption and dereliction of duty have been repeatedly raised, police morale has plummeted, and the "partner system" of veteran officers training young officers has fallen into disuse.

Chang Fang-jung, crime beat reporter for the Independence Evening Post and author of a book on police hero Hou Yu-i, says the image of the police swings between two extremes-either heroes or dogs. One day they are heroes for cracking a case, the next they are dogs for coming up empty-handed. What aspects of the dangerous and difficult lives of Taiwan's nearly 80,000 police deserve more attention from society? And in what respects should the police reform?

In exploring these issues, we found that police work has changed a great deal in recent years. There have been great improvements in the quality of personnel, methods, and equipment, including the introduction of community policing, electronic technology, and scientific methods. But police morale urgently needs a boost. The police cannot do this alone, but need the support of the public as well. We hope that through this month's feature articles, in which we look at police work, the police system, the overall social environment, new scientific investigation techniques, and the thoughts of Hou Yu-i, readers will get, within a limited space, a wide-ranging understanding of today's police in Taiwan. We are also publishing this issue on June 1, Policemen's Day, as a sign of our appreciation for their work.