‘Strong content the way forward for newspapers’
by Natalie Soh, The Straits Times, 16 February 2006
Somehow this story is a little bit related to the one covered in Reading 14 on the media’s future, but is from a newspaper’s perspective.
At its annual journalism awards ceremony recently, Singapore Press Holdings’ editor-in-chief for its English and Malay Divisions, Mr Cheong Yip Seng made a call for traditional newspapers to return back to basics.
His message was that despite competition from the Internet, ‘traditional newspapers can still hold their own by delivering exceptional and credible content.’ But to achieve this, newspapers should invest in quality journalism, and impart knowledge on news gathering, clear writing and ideas generation but yet not neglect what suburban folks want to read.
He acknowledged that publishers everywhere were investing in the Internet and other platforms, but they recognised that it is still newspaper readership that will pay the bills.
The Straits Times had made almost a clean sweep of the awards, winning in categories such as Story of the Year, Feature of the Year and Young Journalist of the Year etc.
Actually the part on the clean sweep is a little misleading, there were about 12 awards, of which The Straits Times won eight. Three went to the Malay newspaper Berita Harian and one to The Business Times. One of the awards was even specially created as the story/journalist it was given to was not eligible the year before, as the article faced legal action.
I’m curious though, how come the Chinese papers didn’t win anything? And these awards are handed out by the organisation itself, how credible are they? No disrespect to the journalists and the work they have put in, but Singapore’s media scene is quite limited – the Straits Times is the main English newspaper, TODAY does not go as in depth as them, so it’s not like there was much to choose from anyway.
Had they won regional or international awards, I would have sit up and taken notice. But this is like someone blowing its own trumpet…but then again, they own the paper, they can put anything they want in it! Ha ha!
by Natalie Soh, The Straits Times, 16 February 2006
Somehow this story is a little bit related to the one covered in Reading 14 on the media’s future, but is from a newspaper’s perspective.
At its annual journalism awards ceremony recently, Singapore Press Holdings’ editor-in-chief for its English and Malay Divisions, Mr Cheong Yip Seng made a call for traditional newspapers to return back to basics.
His message was that despite competition from the Internet, ‘traditional newspapers can still hold their own by delivering exceptional and credible content.’ But to achieve this, newspapers should invest in quality journalism, and impart knowledge on news gathering, clear writing and ideas generation but yet not neglect what suburban folks want to read.
He acknowledged that publishers everywhere were investing in the Internet and other platforms, but they recognised that it is still newspaper readership that will pay the bills.
The Straits Times had made almost a clean sweep of the awards, winning in categories such as Story of the Year, Feature of the Year and Young Journalist of the Year etc.
Actually the part on the clean sweep is a little misleading, there were about 12 awards, of which The Straits Times won eight. Three went to the Malay newspaper Berita Harian and one to The Business Times. One of the awards was even specially created as the story/journalist it was given to was not eligible the year before, as the article faced legal action.
I’m curious though, how come the Chinese papers didn’t win anything? And these awards are handed out by the organisation itself, how credible are they? No disrespect to the journalists and the work they have put in, but Singapore’s media scene is quite limited – the Straits Times is the main English newspaper, TODAY does not go as in depth as them, so it’s not like there was much to choose from anyway.
Had they won regional or international awards, I would have sit up and taken notice. But this is like someone blowing its own trumpet…but then again, they own the paper, they can put anything they want in it! Ha ha!
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