Monday, July 13, 2015

New Look, Same Crap

Their own annual reports confirmed the decline — from 390,363 printed copies of Straits Times (ST) circulated daily at the turn of the millennium to 365,800 in 2010. In 2012, circulation for printed versions of ST shrunk further to 355,700. The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) statistics has it that average net circulation dropped to 322,056 in 2013. So what makes editor Warren Fernandez think a cosmetic revamp ("New look, new ideas, same Singapore soul") will reverse the inevitable ?

Traditional media is going the way of the dodo. Digital versions may recoup some of the lost sales, but the message is still more important than the platform. No point reinventing the wheel when same crap is being peddled.

It's worse when writers like Rachel Chang display open bias in flagellating the opposition political parties. She may be targetting the wrong group when she lashed out with words like "cronyisms and opportunism are not illegal". Look who has a wife, an uncle and relatives ensconced in privileged and financially lucrative appointments. She opined that it would be foolhardy for the electorate to vote in another opposition group to run a town council, whilst indirectly providing justification for them to do so. People in glass houses really shouldn't throw stones.

When Zakaria reminded the prime minister of Singapore's dismal standing in freedom houses rankings, Lee dismissed the shameful status quo with "They don’t like us, fair enough, doesn’t mean we are in the wrong". It looks like Chang is not the only one in need of another wise saying, this time from Jonathan Swift in his ‘Polite Conversation’ and first attested in the United States in the 1713 "Works of Thomas Chalkley":
‘There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.’  

14 comments:

  1. No problem.
    Just print more for the old aunrties
    and uncles to collect.
    It was distributed free to schools supposedly to inculcate reading.
    It certainly will do much to improve tte students' knowledge as well as to indoctrinate them. Expand free distributions to commercial houses and in shopping complexes like they do with Today and Mypaper and soon the Social Media will atrophied.
    The Result could be millions of copies are read and readers learn to be much more enlightened and compliant to policies.

    Of course those using the Prints for their dog and cat poos are also happy.

    patriot

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  2. They have deep pockets and their sugar daddy & mommy have easy access to more cash than any print company in the world.

    Matrix used to measure performance is just for show..
    the real measure is how high can they jump when told to do so.

    Yet they do serve a purpose... cat & dog litter linings, bird cages, grease remover, glass cleaner,.. everything except reading.

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  3. Circulation number may be down but advertising revenue is up.
    Any way think the new version is more readable

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Surely you mean "legible", nor "readable".

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    2. How can frivolous article about a whinging singleton-turned-finally-married woman's boring life be inspirational, let alone her bloody pining for an oven be any readable? She is the utter disgrace to the modern day 21st century single women who are and have been dynamically living interesting life out there. Life is too short to drink bad wine.

      Same soul = same DNA. Nothing changed.

      Delete
  4. "PAP is on our side."

    "Losing An Illusion Makes One Wiser Than Finding A Truth"
    - Ludwig Börne


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  5. To support warren & st, i have terminated my subscription. Will more people give their support.

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    Replies
    1. Cancelled mine about 3 years ago.

      Delete
  6. Indeed, the danger of wilful blindness.

    http://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_the_dangers_of_willful_blindness

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  7. She is happy with the decline in readership. All that matters to her is not about whether readers like what she wrote, most importantly she deliberately wrote it to polish those in ivory towers.

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  8. Its habitual. People subscribe to it even though it has degenerated into the Shitty Times, poor writing, poor reporting. But the REAL reason subscription is down? Lower incomes. At the periphery, some are cancelling to save money.

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  9. The greatest irony is their belief that support or toeing of status quo can do no wrong. They do not see how they are setting up the nation, its people, their own children and eventually more so their grandchildren a lifetime of hardship and turmoil when the house of cards come tumbling down.

    A nation's identity and ability to think and act critically is molded by its fifth estate. Its influence was most eminent in the pre-Internet days when an entire generation could have been educated to be discerning, critical yet constructively assertive enough to position the country on a sound footing in our fragile geo-political and economic environment.

    There are too many skeletons in the closet by the establishment which NPPA shackles effectively. Not only those current but in previous positions of authority have learnt very well how to save their own skins in a myopic way, hand-in-glove with the devil, complicit and setting up future generations for disaster.

    A hundred years from now, historians with access to truly objective facts will lecture from beyond the shores of Singapore on the case study of how a tiny city-state flourished in its first fifty years only to decline gradually but inexorably in the next fifty years. And sitting among the audience will be people who study this city-state called Singapore with an academic curiosity and bent, just as they have done for other failed city-states with similar authoritarian regimes.

    The world will move on, and the much-vaunted city-state lauded by one of its prime ministers as being among the top five financial centers of the world would vanish back in the leaves of history books stowed away in libraries and lecture notes thrown away by lecturers and students.

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  10. The Shit Times is The government mouthpiece. It is read mainly by PAP supporters and a smattering of others, who want to read the "right" pro-PAP stuff like those written by Rachel Chang, the Chua sisters, Warren Fernandez, etc. The decline in it's circulation shows a decline in PAP supporters and the increased influence of the internet and social media, and it is wishful thinking to reverse this by mere cosmetic revamps, unless they improve their journalistic standards and are less biased. It is therefore a positive sign for the Opposition if the readership of the Shit Times continues it's decline.

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  11. I recently came into possession of a copy of the Straits Times. While lining my birdcage with it (what else did you think I was going to do with it?), I skimmed over an article from the health section whose headline was something like “Heroic doctor saves man’s life!!!”. It turned out to be the story of a man who went in for a routine medical checkup at a government clinic, was diagnosed with a treatable form of cancer, got treatment, and recovered; PSA about cancer screening, praise for Singapore’s health system, sunshine and butterflies, the end.

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