Roses and Rockets - Four
This "Roses and Rockets" idea comes from my old mentor, Reuters, which used it to distribute compliments (Roses) or criticisms (Rockets) to its large force of correspondents and sub-editors during the 60s and 70s.
It was all in good spirit done for a vital feedback purpose. Even the best got a rocket once a while; and the newest recruit would sometimes earn a bouquet of roses.
Readers' contributions that are concise, informed and reasoned are very welcomed - but please, no personal complaints or rude remarks. Littlespeck will, of course, subject itself to the same criterion.
June 6, 2003

Rockets

For Streats, Today and The Straits Times for boring readers with their internal advertising bickering ran as general news when it has no public interest.

It started with the free tabloid, Streats, claiming that its readership had jumped 2-1/2 times from 324,000 to 800,000 in less than a year.

Its rival, TODAY, ran a counter report expressing skepticism about the survey and The Straits Times pitched in to support its sister paper, Streats.

Altogether, it was a waste of news space over a subject that readers have absolutely no interest in. Readers have not the slightest interest in knowing how many people read each copy of a free newspaper.

Not even, I dare say, the advertisers who were what the quarrel was aimed at convincing.

Most advertisers have long abandoned relying on "readership" as a means of gauging cost effectiveness of a publication. There are too many variable factors.

The only possible defence is that these are free newspapers (The Straits Times has no such excuse though) which means their number one priority is for advertisers - not readers.

Realistically speaking, readers rank behind advertisers because they are fully subsidised by the latter.

This is one reason why most successful free newspapers elsewhere are mostly light-hearted, the "read-and-throw type" that offers "B and C" (Bikini and Crime). Unlike in Singapore, they generally lack seriousness.

For them, credibility is not the most important quality. Today and Streats can't afford to lose credibility. If they do, they'll never become paying newspapers.

Roses

For New Paper's Faith Teo for her story on June 5 on unmarried teenage mother Suriah Abdul Jalil, for allegedly trying to sell her baby for S$5,000, says her mother.

She had left her family at 15 - and returned home to her mother without her baby. However, she claimed it was her mother who had actually wanted to sell the baby.

Mother says she is uncontrollable and she doesn't know who the father is since she has had sex with many boys. It was the sort of story that shows how lives can go astray when parents and teenage children fail in their duties to each other.

Good human interest story.

Rockets

For New Paper for lack of transparency in not making it clear on its Page One highlight of a shooting story by not making it clear that it actually happened in Malaysia - not in Singapore.

Like most tabloids, The New Paper obviously sells more copies if it offers a dramatic story-and-picture on its front page. And there's no doubt, it is even better if it happens in Singapore than in another country.

It's not the first time that a foreign story (especially if it happens in Malaysia) is displayed on its front page without making it clear that it happens in another country.

Until too late - after you've bought the paper and read inside. A big rocket for lack of transparency.

Roses

For the Straits Times for running its "This and That" and "Bougets" section in its Forum Pages.

The former carries criticisms of the members of the public concerning their bad experiences - poor service and rude people.

While bouguets, of course, are accolades given to acts of kindness or help they get from people or organisations, which otherwise will remain buried forever.

I'm happy to note that bouquets outnumber the complaints.

Both, however, are a reflection of life in Singapore. By publishing them, it makes us better people by serving notice on the bad that people are watching and judging their behaviour.

The good ones are encouraged, too, for the same reason. Thank you, Straits Times.
By Seah Chiang Nee