The AFP report, 'Malaysiakini at vanguard of media revolution', was slightly irritating in the way it conflated Malaysiakini and the Malaysian blogosphere. I tend to think of the former as a newspaper and a very different creature compared to blogs. While I take the essential point that both are part of the online ecosystem and are linked by feedback loops, Malaysiakini offers considerable news content and has a commerical for-profit (rather than free-to-view) subscription-based (rather than ad revenue-based) model.
Without question Malaysiakini was on the vanguard of the Malaysian online news phenomenon and provided a brave, bold example that this whole generation of online bloggers and news providers has been able to draw on
It was Crispin's quote (reproduced above) that got me thinking about what Tocqueville had to say about The Relation Between Public Associations and Newspapers:
The effect of a newspaper is not only to suggest the same purpose to a great number of persons, but to furnish means for executing in common the designs which they may have singly conceived...
Tocqueville describes how a newspaper may (1) spread ideas to many individuals, (2) serve as a site where the many individual minds with the same idea may meet and (3) keep these minds united and spur them to further action.
Underlying all this are certain assumptions. That a platform has sufficient readership; it can't spread ideas to many if it's only read by the author and his dog. That there is a certain degree of interactivity whereby fellow readers are aware of each other; a bit of a problem when comment threads are filled with spambots, trolls and sock puppets. Or the feeling of 'Who the heck are these people??' when one reads the Straits Times Forum. That the site has sufficient holding power (lol burnout) and habitual visitors (lol crickets/tumbleweed). Malaysiakini fulfills these assumptions but it's doubtful if any Singaporean websites have reached that level yet. Thus it would be more helpful to know how, in a lot more detail, Malaysiakini achieved its current success.
A newspaper can survive only on the condition of publishing sentiments or principles common to a large number of men. A newspaper, therefore, always represents an association that is composed of its habitual readers.
I was immediately reminded of a particular quip from Bernard in Yes, Prime Minister about The Sun. It's undeniable that sex, celebrities, scandal or some combination thereof generally gets many more eyeballs. Just look at how the most sordid article that tends to be the most read article for the Straits Times Interactive. Or The New Paper. Or Wanbao. And yet Malaysiakini managed to survive and prosper without that kind of news and, what more, has turned a profit for the last four years. At this point, it's safe to say that habitual readership of the Straits Times is still way higher than a lot of non-MSM online platforms combined, even counting non-MSM websites that are largely derivative of MSM content (cut and paste, discuss, refer to). Though the treadlines might be unfavourable to the MSM, it still has a large entrenched advantage - with good strategy and clever marketing, it's not impossible to reclaim lost territory. How does our non-MSM sites draw in, maintain and grow habitual readership?
