The government prepared Taiwan Yearbook 2004 has all sorts of great information about contemporary Taiwan. I particularly liked the media section, which is a great summary particularly for those of us who don’t know enough Chinese to actually read the daily newspapers.
Newspapers in Taiwan can be divided into two broad categories: general and specialized. General newspapers tend to cover political, economic, social, cultural, sports, international, local, entertainment, leisure, and travel news. The four papers mentioned above belong to this category, as do the Central Daily News 中央日報, China Daily News 中華日報, Taiwan Daily 臺灣日報, Taiwan Times 臺灣時報, and Merit Times 人間福報. Of these, the Central Daily News and China Daily News are operated by the Kuomintang 中國國民黨 and are less competitive as a result of their political subjectivity. Established in 2000, the Merit Times is Taiwan’s first general-interest newspaper founded by a Buddhist group and positions itself as a defender of straight news reporting.