A CONVERSATION WITH P. N. BALJI
You’ve spent the last two decades building what have now become two established newspaper titles, The New Paper and Today. If it’s possible to summarise it all, what has the experience taught you?
Two lessons, really. One, learn to understand your reader. The New Paper appeared as an afternoon paper in 1988. It was aimed at the blue-collar market with bold headlines, big pictures, striking human interest stories. It also tried to simplify complex issues with the use graphics, human faces and simple language. Although the product was looked down by many in the trade, it became a hit with the reader. It created journalism history in Singapore as the first and only afternoon newspaper to breach the 50,000 circulation mark. It now boasts a circulation of 100,000.
The TODAY paper, which came on to the scene 12 years later in 2000, decided to swim upstream. The team realised that there was an untapped hunger for news to be presented with analyses and commentaries. It began to tackle stories in a way which the traditional journalist was uncomfortable with.
To edit both newspapers, you needed journalists with the gumption to walk the untraveled path, the skills to make them happen and management teams that were prepared to sweat it out with the journalists.
Two, learn the money side of the business. Both The New Paper and TODAY would have had a harder time if the editors, like the Brahmin editors of the past, had stuck too strictly and blindly to the division between advertising and editorial like that between church and state. Editors learned to listen to advertisers and suggest editorially-accepted compromises.
How are news media doing in Asia?
Generally, the news media in Asia are doing very well. That is mainly because the region, lead by China and India, is pushing the economic growth up and up. But, the terminal decline that the news media in the West is experiencing will visit us, too. As reader tastes change and as more options spring up, news media will face the pressure to change.
We have time on our time side and we can learn from the mistakes that happened elsewhere. To prepare ourselves for the future, reporting styles must change, newsrooms need to have flatter hierarchies and new business models need to be found.
And what about the journalism profession?
It would be an understatement to say that the profession is facing major challenges. Circulation and advertising revenue will be squeezed. New ways will have to be found to tell the story and to sell advertisements. The business model that has hardly changed since the advent of the news media will come under threat. And with the world becoming more and more connected, journalists cannot afford to be parochial in their reporting. The need to understand how the rest of the world functions will become essential if journalists want to continue to be relevant.
This is where a fellowship like this one comes in. Mid-career journalists from the region coming together to spend three months in a university environment, meeting newsmakers and engaging in issues that affect the industry and the world can add to their intellectual experience.
News media’s reputations are usually built on speaking truth to power, but Singapore journalism does not have a reputation for being aggressively independent. Why do you think journalists from Asia should nonetheless come to Singapore for this Fellowship?
Singapore is not a model of the free press. Far from it. But Singapore is a stimulating environment in which to think about major trends that are beginning to shape the world. NTU, where the fellowship will be parked, is a regional centre of learning. It has attracted a good number of experts from all over the world whom the fellows can tap to get a fix on the dramatic changes taking place in our world.
What is your hope for this Fellowship?
This appointment comes at the end of my 38-year career in journalism. It gives this ex-insider a chance to look at the profession from the outside. I will continue to have some involvement with media. I will be helping my former employer as a consultant and will be doing a project for The Jakarta Post. These will help me keep one foot in the profession.
I still remember my fellowship with Wolfson College in Cambridge University in early 1988. Twenty years later, I look back with great joy the intellectual stimulation and the networking that I took back with me. I hope the NTU fellowship will do the same for the 15 journalists who will be here for three months from February.
Pages: 1 2
