the Media scene ~~

At AMIC conference ...

•NEW MISSION FOR JOURNALISTS
'It is no longer enough for journalists to inform, educate and entertain.

Now they must engage, enlighten and inspire.'

DR TONY TAN,

chairman of Singapore Press Holdings and

former deputy prime minister of Singapore

•CAPACITY FOR MORE NEWSPAPERS
'Besides mass-market newspapers...there is space for niche newspapers,

and I hope to see, within my lifetime,

a women's newspaper, a sports newspaper, and

a newspaper for the 'new old'.'

MR P.N. BALJI,

editorial director of MediaCorp

MEDIA SCENE
SPH aims to stay on top of the game

Dr Tony Tan, chairman of Singapore Press Holdings, delivered the keynote speech at the 16th annual conference of the Asia Media and Information Centre (Amic) and 1st World Journalism Education Congress yesterday. This is an excerpt

(THIS is) a time of dramatic change in the media industry worldwide.
The days of easy growth - yearly gains in advertising and subscription revenue - are behind us. Two key forces have been responsible for this.

The first is the relentless pace of technological advances, the second is rapidly changing consumer habits. The digital revolution and the convergence of technologies and media platforms have opened up vast new sources of news, analysis and information.
This deluge of material is not just from competing media organisations but also from the new legions of citizen journalists and bloggers. With wide access to the Internet and broadband penetration, almost anyone can now be a publisher and enjoy very low distribution costs for whatever content or material he produces.
This content explosion and the 'democratisation of distribution' have had a profound impact on the media industry.

Consumers, too, have changed. We now have a mobile, technologically savvy, multi-tasking generation with many more demands on its time. Their media consumption habits are vastly different from their parents' generation. Overall, they are consuming more media than before, but they are opting for more targeted channels, fragmenting the market in the process.
They no longer passively consume content, but interact with and participate actively in creating content. In Singapore, almost half of Internet users are creators of their own content, and this number is expected to grow.

As a result of these changes, media companies everywhere are grappling with an unprecedented assault on their business models.
On the newspaper front, with the exception of developing markets such as China and India, most developed- country markets have experienced secular declines in circulation numbers.
In the United States, large metro newspapers are the worst hit and are bracing for more readership declines.
Not surprisingly, advertising trends have followed suit, and classified advertising in particular has migrated to the Internet in a major way. So bottom lines of major media companies are under pressure in almost all markets.

Winners and losers
BUT in the face of grave threats, this is also a time of unique opportunities.
In fact, at the recent World Association of Newspapers annual meeting held in Cape Town, South Africa, the mood was appreciably more upbeat, different from the doom and gloom of previous years.
The consensus now - at least outside the US - is that the news business is alive and well, largely because of a flurry of innovations.
At Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), we believe that newspapers will survive - but not all of them. Some will be winners, but quite a few will be losers. The big question is, who will be among the winners?

Our sense is that the papers with the best chance of success are those with unique and differentiated content. In short, content is king.

Community newspapers, for instance, may well outlast some bigger dailies. So will newspapers that can offer mass reach. They will be an effective and valuable medium for display advertisers, even as a long tail of niche products try to make their mark.

Another critical factor is credibility and trust. This still is, or ought to be, one of the strengths of the mainstream media. The bigger, or louder, the information explosion, the more consumers will value and turn to sources they can trust and rely upon.
Papers that continue to be trusted as an authoritative source of news and views will have a far better chance of outlasting the competition.

But much also depends on the boards and managements of media companies. This is often not well appreciated. Like in all businesses, the quality of leadership makes all the difference, especially in challenging times. Newspaper boards and managements must make the right decisions and continue to invest for the future. Boards and managements which embrace new innovations and inspire their staff to transform their businesses will be rewarded with good results.

The media in Singapore
SPH has every intention to be among the winners. We have invested and are continuing to invest a great deal in our business. Our flagship English title, The Straits Times, has a proud 162-year history. We see a window of opportunity for The Straits Times to be among the best papers in the Asia-Pacific.
In all, SPH publishes 14 newspaper titles in four languages in Singapore and we sell more than a million copies a day. Helped by the high 95.4 per cent literacy rate that Singapore has achieved, our products reach 2.7 million readers each day.
This gives us a high newspaper penetration of more than 80 per cent of households in Singapore.
Our magazine titles now number more than 90 and this number is growing, in Singapore and in the region. Looking ahead, our aim is to move beyond print and beyond Singapore.
We already have significant stakes in television and we operate two radio stations. Our online sites have more than 100 million page views and some six million unique visitors each month.
We have launched our online classifieds, called ST701, starting with jobs, with vehicles and properties to follow.
Our online search and directories will come onstream early next year.

But we are determined to do more and our aim is to become a winner in the online space as well. To achieve this objective, we will leverage on our rich content and advertiser relationships, and use our financial resources to invest in new media, in new products and in new adjacent businesses.

Journalism education
LET me now turn to journalism education. Having been involved in university education for many years, one need is evident to me - the media industry needs high-quality journalism education more than ever before. This is why the World Journalism Educators Congress is so timely and important.

The true mission of journalists has not changed. If anything, it has broadened to encompass even more responsibilities. It is no longer enough for journalists to inform, educate and entertain. Now they must engage, enlighten and inspire.

To do this, journalists must have strong core skills, deep-rooted professional values and high ethical standards. This is where a sound journalism education makes a huge difference.

In Singapore, from the early years, our newspapers played an active nation-building role - helping to build a harmonious, multiracial, multi-religious society in this small city-state. From this interaction between public life and the media grew a deep and instinctive belief that the media must identify with the aspirations of the communities we serve.

It is from this standpoint that our papers strive to provide balanced views on both national and international developments. We want to help our communities make sense of what's going on so that they can make enlightened choices on issues that affect their lives and their children's lives.

I believe that papers which discharge this responsibility well will continue to thrive.

Let me end by acknowledging the role that Singapore's own journalism schools have played, in particular the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, which is the co-organiser of this congress.
Some of you may be aware that Mr Wee Kim Wee, the late president of the Republic of Singapore, was editorial manager of The Straits Times.
SPH is honoured that one of its journalists rose to the highest office in the land and has NTU's journalism school named after him.
In its short 15-year history, the Wee Kim Wee School has built up a creditable record, attracting good students and producing media professionals who have made their mark not just in Singapore but also overseas. The Wee Kim Wee School has every prospect of securing its place as a premier Asian journalism school, one that is confident of its own Asian model. I am also confident that it will achieve international eminence.

~~~

Striving for credibility and trust
Remarks by Patrick Daniel, editor-in-chief of SPH's English and Malay Newspapers Division, at the same conference

I WOULD like to start in a roundabout way, and make reference to a wonderful book I read some years ago. It's called The Passions And The Interests, by Albert O. Hirshman, the noted Princeton economist. He sub-titled it Political Arguments For Capitalism Before Its Triumph.
This volume is an excellent summary of the little-known history of Western capitalism as we know it today. Most of us know the history of communism better than we know the history of capitalism.

The background to the book's curious title is that with the decline of the religious order in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, the big question for moral thinkers was: How do you control the passions of man? To cut a long story short, they came up with the novel idea that rather than repress passions such as avarice, it was better to harness these passions into something constructive that can contribute to the general welfare. So money-making became seen as no longer an unruly passion and was taken instead to be a calm 'interest'.
To quote Hirshman: 'One set of passions, hitherto known as greed, avarice or lust of lucre, could be usefully employed to oppose and bridle such other passions as ambition, lust for power or sexual lust.'

Note that this 'greed is good' foreshadowed Adam Smith's idea of the Invisible Hand, which made his 1776 book, The Wealth Of Nations, such an epochal one.
I cite this because it is relevant to our topic today.

According to Hirshman, the idea of countervailing passions travelled to America where it was used by the founding fathers in drafting the US Constitution. For instance, in Federalist 51, the division of powers among the branches of government was justified on the grounds that 'ambition must be made to counteract ambition'.

Marketplace of ideas
YOU can guess from this where the notion of the Fourth Estate emerged, along with the First Amendment prohibition of any law that abridges the freedom of the press.
This is also the source of the so-called 'marketplace of ideas'. Hirshman attributes this notion to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said in a 1919 judgment: '(T)he best test of truth is the power of (a) thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.' He added: 'That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.'
It is of course arguable whether this theory of the US Constitution leads to the truth. One clear danger is that it leads to increasingly partisan views, where the twain never meet and consensus is well-nigh impossible.

Whatever the case, my key point is that the First Amendment rights and the 'marketplace of ideas' are not part of the intellectual or cultural heritage of other societies, especially here in the East.

A further point is that while Western societies have moved on to other issues - civil rights, for example - other parts of the world are still grappling with the unruly passions of its citizens. Promoting a harmonious order is still a challenge, and they have to do it in their own way.
Of course, this varies from country to country and I can't speak for all of Asia. But I can say that each of us is entitled to fashion our own approach, taking into account our heritage, culture and history. For instance, it is axiomatic to those in multiracial and multi-religious societies that we have to exercise freedom with a large dose of responsibility.

Let me speak specifically about Singapore Press Holdings and its newspapers. Our flagship English daily, The Straits Times, has a 162-year history. We were first run by the British and, then after independence, became Singapore-owned and managed. We have grown and prospered along with this city- state. So we make no apologies for being pro-Singapore.
Our history has been that we willingly play a strong nation-building role. With independence from the British and then separation from Malaysia, the future then was precarious and we strived to help build a successful Singapore.

Wide fairways
WE have been fortunate in Singapore to have a Government that is focused on effective, far-sighted governance, and on providing jobs and a good livelihood for its citizens. We in the SPH media will continue playing a useful role in taking our communities further forward.

The question is: How do we play this role? One starting point is the laws of the land. There is no US-style constitutional provision protecting press freedom. On the contrary, there are laws that proscribe the power of the media - everything from the Official Secrets Acts to defamation laws. We take these as a given and respect the laws we have to abide by.

To use a golf analogy, we have a good sense of where the out-of-bounds markers are, or what we call the 'OB markers'. But the key thing is, the fairways are wide enough for us to produce credible, good-quality papers, with accurate news and well-argued, intelligent and balanced commentaries and analyses.

Credibility is a key word here. Freedom with responsibility doesn't have to mean we settle for third-rate products. We in SPH are happy that our readership surveys show most of our readers believe what they read in our papers and give us higher marks for credibility than readers in other countries.

Credibility and trust are also important for another reason - we need to continue to attract good journalists and editors if we are to produce quality newspapers. If we do a poor job, we will soon lose our talent. Decline will then become inevitable. In a thriving city and in a flourishing media scene - where just about every international newspaper is available and where online news and information can be accessed freely - talent will flow to where it is most valued.

We in SPH are determined to ensure we get more than our fair share of talent. This is the surest way of ensuring that we continue to thrive for many more decades to come.

ST, Tues 26 Jun 07