Unspun

Faced by dwindling criculation and the threat of blogging, a couple of newspapers in Indonesia’s neighboring countries Malaysia and Singapore have resorted to blogs themselves.

First off the block on blogs was the Singapore’s Straits Times with STOMP. It looks tabloidy and has posts of MMS photos from Singaporeans on subjects only a Singapore audience could get excited on: beehives in residential areas! five cms of floodwaters! shrubs uprooted!

Then there is the Malaysian News Straits Times’ MoNSTer blog. It ‘s recently launched and features a few people I haven’t heard of (but that’s no indication of anything as I haven’t been in the country for yonks) but representative of stereotypes: the cool, pony tailed sensitive guy, the slutty looking, bee-stung-lips- pouting woman, the young (Indian?) avatar of sports etc.

These developments are interesting to watch as traditional dailies try to grapple with new technology and the blogging phonemenon amid falling circulation. But will they work?

I think it would be difficult as the papers are still rooted in traiditional thinking. They are treating these blogs like newspapers where you have a modern version of a letter to the editor as in STOMP or where you have columnists as in MoNSTer.

Blogs are about conversations, and as in any conversations the personality of the people matter. Both papers would do better if they had their chief editor blogging and discussing on the difficulties newspaper people face in making decisions, the political censorship and stuff which matter. But that would not happen because the Malaysian and Singaporean authorities are anal retentive when it comes to press freedom.

Nevertheless, it is good to see experimentation. In Indonesia when you talk to many editors about blogs, the likely reaction that you’d get is: duuuuhhh?