Garcia is wrong. A ‘new’ Straits Times it isn’t

Dear Tengku Razaleigh

That paper you bought on Tun Razak’s instructions almost 40 years ago has turned its back on its parentage again. It doesn’t want to be The New Straits Times, it keeps wanting to be a new Straits Times. I wonder how you feel?
(It means nothing to me, it’s not my paper.)

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Having done the Singapore Straits Times before, and made many little hops over to KL while trying to do the Star, the big cheese of the newspaper design racket Jose Mario Garcia may have got a little confused about which side of the Causeway he was at the past few months.

He’s been flogging the line that the NST must emphasize the “new” in its title.

Only trouble is: he’s 40 years out of date.

Bug-eyed aliens rule Putrajaya

Nanoo, Nanoo

Shock! Owners of “New” Straits Times revealed as bug-eyed aliens!

Some negative buzz on NST’s sorta revamp

Looks better in Firefox 3.6

As is usual with the NotStraitTime’s annual tinkering via kinda-sorta revamps, there’s been some carping amidst the polite applause. That’s only to be expected, of course. A couple of regular commenters (one of whom sounds suspiciously like an old design editor) kindly provided some feedback yesterday.

Dirt Road Rider sets out some valid points and asks pertinent questions. On the other hand Illuminati gives the brush-off to what he sees as merely a cosmetic paint job. In the process poor Fred Mah gets a few knocks, unfairly I think: his task as chief graphic artist is usually technical, to provide the Quark visual trickery required to meet the “vision” of the production editor and other editorial executives, with Don Choong working out the formatting on the Tera CPS.

Office politics

Illuminati’s views still hold water, but the essential point to grasp about NotStraitTime’s perpetual tinkering is that all “revamps” consist merely of tinkering with the visual furniture. Using “revamp” as a front, corporate tigers move in for the kill, finding opportunities for a huge exercise in Editorial office politics — to move people around, promote friends and allies, and cast aside the unfavoured, all in the name of “improving the paper”.

What’s it all about, Alfie?
10 sorta good things
about an NST revamp

This latest exercise is no different. There’s blood on the Editorial shop floor, and I’d venture to guess more will be spilled.

Tinkering with typeface choices, tinkering with leading and tracking, tinkering with tints and shades — gloss on the dross as I said the other day — impresses the design-impaired corporate management and the real targets: their political masters, who can be easily fooled with design trickery.

That none of this amounts to a real redesign or a real repositioning doesn’t really matter. The opinions of other design professionals don’t really matter. The opinions of the shop-floor masses and of the movers and shakers at the very top — only those matter.

It’s the brand, stupid

It’s essentially a massive exercise of self-promotion among corporate management and their Editorial hangers-on — to earn bragging rights, and to be able to swagger with self-importance. Since people at the top are easily swayed by the superficial, why bother with anything more. That there is little of real substantial change (what, you expect us to actually do some work?) doesn’t really matter.

No matter what the blurbs and house ads say, the owner and publisher is the real target.

The other point is that the whole campaign has been built around the theme of brand consciousness, to convince Editorial, among others, that branding is what matters. (Screw journalism, I guess.)

Perhaps all this may not impress M Garcia, R Reason, A Jacobson or the SND — but they don’t ladle out perks, promotions or datukships.

Hey, this is all about Nasty House. Only the opinions of Putrajaya and Menara Dato Onn have ever really mattered.

More to come (in about six months).

© 2010 uppercaise
Markup in longhand gets you old fast. Sigh.

Another notsonew NotStraitsTimes

If you were up all night waiting with bated breath for the predawn thud on your car porch announcing the weighty arrival of yet another New New New Straits Times this morning, please remember not to exhale. It’s bad for global warming.

Do bear in mind that Our Glorious and Supreme Leader (no, not Diana Ross) * recently promised the world that Malaysia will cut carbon dioxide emissions. So do your bit, don’t breathe out. (If you can’t remember, get the details at » 1Najib shioks the 1world with 1word).

Oh yes, the revamp. Well, things are being stirred around a bit. Mergers and acquisitions have taken place, editorially — it’s also a way to show that Editorial are on the ball, and Corporate aren’t the only ones who can do M&A. It’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that, all prettied up by Fred Mah and crew.

Gloss on the dross so to speak.

All the non-sections now come under the purview of the Mighty Theres and the busy Bee and their minions. Three chief subs on one half of the floor. A weighty undertaking indeed. Meanwhile the real chief sub, all one of him and somewhat hampered by a game leg, keeps his half up by being provided the ponderous counter-weight of J Sossai.

Otherwise, has anything really changed? Let me know what you think. I’ll wait, with bated breath I hope.

In the meantime, chew over what «Dirt Road Rider » said last week:

Although some of its so-called “creative and intelligent” editors are trying to bust their backs to reinvent the image of this pathetic rag, they are just chasing a mirage.

Look at its news pages and clunky website and you can tell they don’t have an honest clue to what they are doing. I hear there are plans to turn the paper back into a broadsheet. Wow, Pow, Bang! How smart!
Dirt Road Rider

A change in format has indeed been seriously considered. Sigh

Money, money, money

As a morale-booster to pep up the crew and in the season of ang pows, loads of moolah in the form of ex-gratia payment were distributed, I am told. In the spirit of double-entry bookkeeping, however, said loads of moolah were also summarily debited a while later. Or so I am told. How’s that for dealing and wheeling?

Our Supreme Leader (not Diana Ross) speaks

The media might take a different path… Sin Chew might take a different path…Utusan (Malaysia) might take a different path… other papers might take a different path, but although we take different paths, we must converge and we must reach our final destination.”

“We take different paths because we must allow some latitude in our society. We must allow some room for differences of opinion and even dissent but we must be conscious that we are not pulling apart this society, but we (must ensure that we) are slowly but surely bringing all Malaysians together.”

He also stressed that the demands made by a particular community should not be at the expense of other communities in the country.
1Najib at Sin Chew’s Chinese New Year gathering

Sounds like he’s been reading Insider commentaries. But not the N…? Oops.

Anyone remember to tell KDN? Or the thought control police?

The 1SirTiong’s response

The One and Only Sir Tiong, grand duke and overlord of the Overseas Chinese press, said:

“At the same time, we also understand our readers’ expectations of us; they expect us to continue being a voice of the people as we have always been. And we will continue to do our best to meet these expectations.

…we are committed to our journalistic and professional principles. We will not compromise our integrity. …we will do what the people expect of us as partners of the Government in nation-building, but we will also do what our readers expect of us as journalists. We believe these two commitments are not contradictory or inconsistent.
Reported at MySinChew

It’s about time Sin Chew published in English and BM.

© 2010 uppercaise

(* Diana quip stolen from TNQ. tq.)

10 good things about an NST revamp

1. It’s a way to spend company money by rewarding friends in the marketing business with nice little contracts.
2. It’s a way to create a fake excitement in a bored newsroom, but mostly among ambitious executives.
3. It’s a way for corporate tigers to keep busy rushing around bossing everyone.
4. It’s a way for under-employed executives to suddenly turn “creative” with plenty of “new” ideas stolen from around the world
5. It’s a way to build or temporarily burnish an ailing reputation and find some short-term glory in “turning around an ailing newspaper”.
6. It’s a way for corporate management to show the owners that Something Is Being Done.
7. It’s a way for Marketing to bully Editorial by blaming editorial shortcomings for loss of sales.
8. It’s a way for politico-mercenary executives to shift attention away from the real ills of the paper or company.
9. It’s a way to have fun and spend other people’s money without actually having to do anything.
10. It’s a way to give graphic designers a chance to dust off designs languishing in their drawers.

It might even con the buying public into taking a second look.

You think?

Rape of the NST

nstman, a frequent commenter on NST affairs (and definitely no fan of A Kadir Jasin) popped up with a comment here yesterday that is a lucid, coherent take on the state of affairs at Nasty House. nstman has been a frequent commenter on this at Rocky’s Bru (in the days before Rocky saw the light). Here’s a snippet of what he said yesterday:

Since 1999 when its circulation went into free fall – it was down to 80,000 at one stage – from a high of 180,000 the hitherto grand lady of Malaysian journalism has undergone about 10 revamps. Not one revamp has generated returns, except for the 2004 revamp when Kalimullah Hassan took over. It is to his credit he initiated many changes to make the paper readable. He also cleared the decks, removing fuddy-duddies who hindered the progress of the paper. Alas, the bonhomie generated by Kali was misinterpreted by radical elements of the old order which regarded former helmsman Kadir Jasin as the god of journalism.

Today, the NST is back at square one – down in the dumps. It has lost direction. Instead it has slunk back to dishing out shameless propaganda rodolent of 1999 when Kadir Jasin turned the paper into a cesspit of lies to finish off Anwar Ibrahim.

Related:

The media curse of the political owner

The prince and the presss

The prince’s charter for political reform

Throttling a castrated press

Noose tightens, print media fights back

Press law review may transfer onus to editors, journalists

» Read full comments by nstman

Quite by chance, a couple of days ago I had come across another perceptive piece by a commenter.

The Perennial Angst of NST

This was the comment by «Dirt Road Rider @ 3:19pm» made at Rocky’s Bru on 14 Dec 2008.

Somewhere in the middle of a whole load of the usual shit-stirring that used to go on in the bowels of the Rocky’s Bru comments section, Dirt Road Rider provided some thoughtful comments on the state of the NotStraits Times. A snippet:

No matter how many revamps it has to endure, the product will remain the same because all these exercises are mere cosmetic surgery of the news and presentation.

There’s little substance in the area of editorial content whether it’s news or features. There has always been an endless litany of problems faced by the NST.

As evidenced by past revamps, the paper soon loses its direction after a redesign, not because of a lack of expertise in the area of good journalism and newspaper production, but more because of the following:

Then he lists the factors that he believes are responsible:

• politics
• poor editorial management
• conservatism
• poor news values
• bad choice of executives
• politicking
• poor communication
• lack of professionalism
• lack of training

» Read Dirt Road Rider’s comments in full. Do try to ignore the other abusive stuff there, boys and girls: they are not germane to the issue at hand and might turn your hair. (Sez he.)

I don’t know who Dirt Road Rider is. Most of his observations are similar in substance to comments that many of us, in and out of Nasty House, have made over the years. As nstman and Dirt Road Rider have shown, you don’t need to be a genius to figger out what’s ailing the NotStraitsTimes. You just need to ask.

© 2010 uppercaise

Courant affairs

Last week, in Taking a tilt about the Hartford Courant’s design experiment of tilting its titleplate sideways, I said a story goes with it.

For those of you who haven’t bothered looking it up, one caveat.

There are no disguised messages here about any possible redesign our Nasty Times may be thinking of doing, nor a sly nudge-nudge-wink-wink sideways stab at its current design or content. It’s just a good story about what sometimes goes on inside a newspaper.

Taking a tilt

Design experiments sometimes stray beyond what common sense might demand, when designers and editors decide to push beyond the norm, over-eager to tilt at convention, wishing to be seen to be different.

Alas, it appears here they managed only to slide into the gutter [left]. Thankfully the Courant has now resumed the upright posture befitting its pedigree among ink-stained wretches. Though I wouldn’t go so far as to state that they saw the light and righted themselves.

A story goes with it, as one might say.

Mini crit: the Courant should have had more pride in the elegance of its blackletter titleplate. The slab-seriff drops are too jarring, and the body text set ragged-right slightly disconcerting.

— by Garamonde of Crabtree, Hoe, Hoe & Hoe
  not quite so ancient an ink-stained wretch

Newsweek redesign

NEWSWEEK has been redesigned, two years after its last makeover. The NYT says

The makeover represents a rethinking of what it means to be a newsweekly, but no redesign can gild the cold fact that it remains a news magazine that comes out weekly at a time when current events are produced and digested on a cycle that is measured with an egg timer, not a calendar…. Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, described the problem nicely. “As the number of news outlets expands, it is said, attention spans shrink; only the fast and the pithy will survive,” he wrote in an editor’s note about a redesign of the magazine — but it was one that heralded the last redesign in October 2007.
The fact that another redo is at hand in less than two years suggests that there is not a design concept in the world that will serve as a firewall against broader changes in reading and advertising habits.

NYT story: Newsweek’s Journalism of Fourth and Long