Speech by RADM (NS) Lui Tuck Yew at the Singapore Press Club Eminent Speakers Series
Mr. Patrick Daniel, President, Singapore Press Club
Mr. Ng Wei Joo, President, Institute of Public Relations of Singapore
Members of the Singapore Press Club and IPRS
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Connecting the dots in a transforming landscape. Ours is a changing landscape, changing preferences, changing patterns of behaviour, both by consumers as well as by advertisers. And I think it is quite a truism that we need to be mindful of some of these changes. None of us here can ignore the changes that are taking place around us.
2 If content is king, then credible content is obviously the ace of trumps. Credible content, in my view, helps to separate credible publications, credible media, from what is happening around us. And credible content is something to be guarded jealously, and in controlled availability, in various forms across various media. It is something that needs to be thought through very, very carefully.
3 What is our landscape like? It is interesting that if you segment your target audience, the behaviours and the media consumption pattern of the different target audience segments are actually quite different.
4 This is borne out of some work that is done by Morgan Stanley[1]. They got a teenager to write about the media habits of teenagers. For those of us with children, I think we will be able to identify with what this teenager wrote.
5 In brief, it is this proposition that teenagers are obviously consuming more media but in entirely different ways and almost certainly, not prepared to pay for it. They are happy to chase content and music across various platforms and devices, but it is almost a badge of honour to be able to get this content for free. Print media, according to the teenager, is viewed as irrelevant. The young do not read newspapers and few watch TV. I think if you couple this together with, for example the United States and United Kingdom, where large and small newspapers are facing falling circulations and declining advertisement revenues, it paints a rather grim picture.
6 There is increased competition from online news sources and news aggregators. For the first quarter of 2009, it was reported that in the United States, advertising revenue has fallen close to 30 per cent[2] and the situation is mirrored in the United Kingdom.
7 What about the situation here in Singapore? Well, the mainstream media here continues to hold ground. It remains the dominant source of information. If we refer to the 2008 Nielsen Media Index survey, 75 per cent of those surveyed selected newspapers as their preferred source of news. And there are good reasons why this is so.
8 One, they are competent and comprehensive. Secondly, they are objective and professional. Unlike some foreign newspapers, I think the media here in Singapore has not gone for aggressive journalism, they have not gone for aggressive campaigning. They have instead taken the position that they would investigate thoroughly before they publish, and if there are good grounds for them to take certain positions which may be detrimental to the interest of establishment and institutions, they are prepared to do so. But they do so from the point of view of responsibility.
9 But even in Singapore, we are not spared from the behavioural patterns that we see in the young in other places. The majority of the individuals here in Singapore based on a survey spend at least 20 hours a week surfing the internet[3].
10 Likewise, our media landscape is also changing. The mainstream media is coming under some pressure from the new media. The new media advantage is speed, immediacy, prepared to serve a niche segment, providing opportunities for everyone who wants to be a journalist or broadcaster. They would like to believe that they are representing what people want to say, to hear, to do or want the establishment to do on their behalf.
11 The last part of my remarks is to talk about how we then go forward. How do we hold the ground that we have so painfully gained over the many years of credible and trusted journalism? Tempting though it might be, the solution is not to import new media technology into print or into the mainstream media. Not their approach, not their practices, not their standards. Because this, in my view, would be subtraction by addition. Adding some of their practices, some of their approaches, actually detracts and subtracts from what you have painfully gained and built up over many, many years.
12 Instead, the preference, or the preferred solution, is to expand print, or the mainstream media into the new media. Presenting information and news in appropriate packages for various media. What I would term as ‘multiplication by division’. So in the first instance you want to avoid subtraction by addition, in the second place you want to reach multiplication by division.
13 Using what you have, using your journalists, using what your people are able to put together, yet dividing into appropriate packages for the different media. You need to do so in order to retain eyeballs and expand mindshare.
14 My assessment, having been in MICA for a little over a year, is that the mainstream media has done well. They have adapted their practices to what is required, and they are continuing to experiment and find new ways to reach out to new audience segments without losing their traditional strengths.
15 They have gone on to online news sites and popular Web 2.0 platforms, and they are experimenting with citizen journalism, expanding into search engines or discussion forums, providing online videos, and even getting journalists to blog. Most important of all, despite all that has taken place in the landscape that is changing and evolving, I think the mainstream media has continued to remain a trusted news source. It reflects reality on the ground and has high credibility among the people. These are strengths that we must hold on to, and these are strengths that we must guard jealously, preserve and strengthen.
16 On that note, I hope that today also will be an occasion where I can learn from you, listen to your views and be able to add something to the conversation that would take place thereafter. Thank you very much.
Topics: Eminent Speaker Series, journalism, Press Club, RADM, Singapore
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