Straits Times
Watershed change
Popular digital media is eroding a reliable ally that has traditionally helped garner support for the government. By Seah Chiang Nee
Oct 20, 2007

THE 162-year-old Straits Times has been giving ground to the fast-speed digital media, drawing some advice from a concerned Lee Kuan Yew on how it can fight back.

The editors are told: Don’t compete on breaking the news; be first with the background and the analysis. “The ones with high credibility will stay in business,” Lee said.

This is the only way the print media in Singapore, which is stagnating, could stay in the contest.

It is good advice, if they can – or are allowed to – carry it out.

(In his National Day message, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Singapore’s newspapers were “under siege” from the digital media.)

The elder Lee's comments came in a recent interview with a US columnist on the spreading influence of the Internet on the world’s newspaper readers.

But in the West where newspapers are in sharper decline, it is regarded as an industry and technological shift, but in Singapore it is something more.

For its leaders, it represents an erosion of a reliable long-time ally that has traditionally helped to garner support for the government.

In the past, Minister Mentor Lee had used state television and controlled newspapers as a means to win hearts and minds against the communists, race chauvinists and other enemies. Today, it promotes his policies.

This hold is now loosening as young people turn more and more to the faster and interactive news delivered by 24-hour TV channels and Internet information and discussion sites.

This is gradually prying loose his party’s hold onto its trusting communicating link with his people.

The mainstream media is predictable and under control; the Internet is not; it has a mind of its own and often promotes alternative, if not opposing, views.

He is right to be concerned about the future – for two reasons.

First, the switch away from print to multimedia is likely to accelerate as more people (currently about two-thirds of the population) gain access to the Internet.

Second, the sales decline of the Straits Times is worse than “stagnant” when measured against the recent surge in population.

Last week, it reported that sales for the past year had fallen 0.8% to 381,354 copies.

Despite its near market monopoly and Singapore’s increased use of English, the downward trend over the years has been sharper when calculated on a per capita basis.

Between 1998 and 2007, circulation fell by 2.7% even as the population surged by a record 34%.

ST daily circulation per 100,000 people:
1998: 11,220 copies.
2007: 8,140 copies.

This is a per person drop of 17.5% but this has to take into consideration that a segment of Singaporeans (albeit declining significantly) read only Chinese and other vernacular papers.

Media observers say it could be much worse if the ST had to face an erstwhile rival competing in the same market.

The government has protected its monopoly by not issuing a rival publisher to compete in the broadsheet market that could threaten its monopoly.

Despite the long-term threat, Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) – which owns the ST and eight other newspapers – is far from being a sunset company.

Last week, it announced an 18.1% rise in annual profits, or S$506.2mil (RM1.1bil), but with one-thirds (this was wrongly stated as two-thirds in the Star report. Apologies) of revenue coming from properties and other investments.

Non-newspapers will continue to fuel profits. Meanwhile, it plans to guard its newspaper franchise by going multimedia – and regional.

“The ground underneath SPH is shifting, so over the years the company has resorted to selling assets to pay dividends,” said henryling, a stock market commentator.

“It is not creating value but eating up value.”

The digital threat has not come only from cable TV and the Internet news sites.

A wide range of market analyses and institutional data that were once released only through newspapers is now freely available online.

“This means people now do not need to depend on newspapers for crucial information,” said a blogger.

At one time, people would queue to buy an evening newspaper just to find out the latest 4-D result.

Today, it is available free of charge with a click of the computer mouse.

With a history of 162 years, the ST has experience and resources and a depth of history that few institutions in Singapore possess. It was launched in 1845, barely 26 years after Sir Stamford Raffles landed on the island.

Its biggest strength lies in advertisement, especially classifieds, and demand is soaring because of the current economic boom.

Being the only morning national gives it a virtual licence to print money on advertisements; when markets are active, the money just rolls in.

Even this strength is not without challenge from classified sites like Craigslist Singapore, where sellers offer a wide range of products.

Singaporeans can find online marketplaces for everything, ranging from cars to property, from hobbies to jobs, said blogger mrbrown.

This has prompted SPH to move into this small but rapidly growing online classified business.

Will the Straits Times still be around 20 years from now? I believe it will.

State icons don’t die but it will probably take a different form as it adopts new technology to deliver and explain the news.

A better delivery of content is part of the solution.

The crux as MM Lee suggested lies in re-adapting its editorial priorities to write fast analyses of the news – with credibility.

That presupposes a freer hand to do so, something that could be encouraged by a further relaxation of control on newspapers. But that’s another story.

(This was published in The Star on Oct 20, 2007)