Letter
Commentary on regaining readership
From SPH spokesperson Irene Ngoo, a letter on Littlespeck article on stagnating Straits Times circulation. Editor's reply follows.
Oct 29, 2004

Dear Seah,
I trust that you and your family have been keeping well. It's good to see that you are still as prolific as ever, writing regularly for your own website and contributing to other newspapers.

I write to you in my capacity as the 'spokesman' for SPH ¨(I crossed over to corporate relations two years ago) and would like to respond to one point in your recent commentary, headlined 'Regaining readership'. This commentary was also published in The Star on 19 October 2004, under the headline 'It's back to media monopoly'.

When you described The Straits Times' penetration rate as "paltry", you did not take into account the fact that Singapore is a multi-racial society, and many read the Chinese, Malay or Tamil newspapers.

To say that The Straits Times has penetrated "only 35 per cent" of the 4.24 million population misses this point. It is also arguable whether the 4.24 million figure is the correct base to use, as it includes young children as well as foreign workers.

The facts are these: SPH publishes 13 paid newspapers in the four official languages and one free newspaper. Our newspapers reach over a million households daily.

Every day, 2.78 million individuals, or 90 per cent of people in Singapore above 15 years old, read at least one of the SPH newspapers. This is one of the highest penetration rates in the world. The Straits Times alone is read by over 1.3 million readers daily.

Your figure on The Straits Times - penetration rate in Serangoon Gardens, which you gave as 40%, is also off the mark. It should be 60%. If we include the sales of all the other SPH newspapers, the figure is 78%.

Despite global declining newspaper sales and greater competition for readers' time, SPH newspapers have held their ground. This is affirmed by the latest Nielsen survey which showed that both readership and reading time have gone up, in particular for The Straits Times.

This has been the result of our ceaseless efforts to make sure that our newspapers stay relevant to the needs and aspirations of our readers.
Kind regards,

Irene Ngoo
Assistant Vice President
Corporate Relations
Singapore Press Holdings

Editor's reply:

Hello Irene,
It's nice to hear from you. My family's fine. It's been a long time since we met and I trust things are well with you and everyone at home.

I'm sorry that so many experienced journalists are moved into business or management, but that's your newspaper's perogative. I just hope it will not have a negative impact on journalistic standards.

Thank you for your letter clarifying some of my figures I used to show a stagnating growth of the Straits Times over the past decade. My focus was on this flagship (mention of others was actually incidental).

At any rate I'm grateful for your explanation, and I'm happy to accept the statistics you have given whenever relevant but I must explain the following:-

(1) I'm sure that surveys or terms like "readership" or "reach" or "reading time" are relevant in the media business, especially advertising, but please don't be annoyed with me when I say I'd prefer to talk of circulation. Just old habit, I guess. I think it's a more tangible measurement.

You'd remember how "STREATS" and "TODAY" quarrelled over "readership" figures given by their own survey companies that had jumped dramatically up and down.

(2) My figure of 35 per cent is a measurement of society's penetration - not only of the English-educated alone - in other words a circulation-population ratio. The 389,000 daily circulation, is by iself, not a 'paltry' figure in another city.

But it is here when it refers to the only national English language newspaper (if you don't buy it, you've got zilch) in a city, where the English literacy is so high. It's 6.5% growth in almost 10 years is also 'paltry' considering the population had gone up by a million, or some 30 per cent.

The reason is, of course, many young people are turning away from The Straits Times (among others) for various reasons - despite its recent improvements. You refer to 1,000,000 households; ST's daily circulation is about 389,000 a day. This may actually be a good measurement of society penetration, which is 38.9 percent.

(3) You're right; Singapore is multi-national (readers are aware of this) and that other papers, too, count - and the SPH has a 90% total newspaper reach of all households. Well, that's monopoly, which is good for some and bad for others.

Nothing personal, just a simple fact. To start breaking up into language, literacy, or age groups (babies don't read) and other factors would make it impossible to measure The Straits Times' penetration of our society.

My article was aimed at highlighting the worldwide decline of newspaper-reading habits among the young in the face of other news sources - and The Straits Times is no exception.

It is not to count peas, although some figures were necessary to give an idea of our own decline, despite its recent improvements in writing style, headlines, design and graphic.

The latest victim is the weekly Far East Economic Review, a long-time magazine with a long history of great reporting (bad ones, too, of course) in Asia..

Wishing you and the Straits Times all the best.
Seah Chiang Nee