just rambling

The reality of The Straits Times

Straits Times put on trial its latest “feature” today — seeing the world through tinted lenses (aka 3D glasses).

The paper says this is one way it is trying to improve itself, by allowing its readers to get the news from a different perspective. So I decided to do a simple quantitative analysis to find out if it was so. It turned out that only 10 out of the 65 news photo and graphics (excluding small profile pictures) could be seen in 3D perspective. On the other hand, some 20 advertisements were 3D ready. Plus, that pair of 3D spectacles was “Brought to You by Samsung”. And, if you didn’t know, TODAY newspaper was actually the first to bring 3D to newspapers. They worked with Panasonic Singapore and were upfront about it.

Most importantly, they kept it out of editorial content.

This aggressive campaign by Samsung and Panasonic to reinvent advertising on our local newspapers to push the 3D agenda is one thing. But, 3D editorial content? I’m not sure if it works, at all.

Besides the fact that it takes 1.5 hours for the photo desk to process a 3D photo, and photographers having to shoot such that it is suitable for 3D, the effect is simply not very nice at all. Through those glasses, the photos lose their colour. Without them, the photo looks blur. Moreover, none of the photos I saw today convinced me that seeing something pop out was nothing more than gimmicky. And, let’s not even start on how those spectacles hinders the reading experience!

If ST is really keen on improving their readers’ needs for images in the newspaper, then put it in multimedia journalism like this, and give more space to infographics and photojournalism in the newspaper and online. No need for anything fanciful, just let the talented photographers and artists do good old visual storytelling.

The only reason why I think ST hopped on to 3D was because it is ‘cool’ now to have it, and I won’t be surprised if it was heavily subsidised by the advertisers in some way or another.

Advocating Journalism, Advocacy Journalism

After embarking on the interesting option of publishing my final-year journalism project online last year, it was heartening to see the junior batch take their projects online too. While I love my printed newspaper, there is no doubt that the future of journalism must go online in some way. On a personal level, it’s also an excellent platform to ensure your project doesn’t get forgotten in the archives, but remains out there to be Googled on as and when the topic becomes relevant.

Kababayan: Faces of Filipinas in Singapore is a photojournalism project by Kong Yen Lin and Nura Ling that puts a new face to the Filipino women migrant community in Singapore. Long regarded as just here to work as domestic maids, Filipinas who come to Singapore today increasingly span different classes and occupations including designers, businesswomen, nurses and teachers. It is an impressive depth of work that uses multimedia slideshows and photo essays to bring you through the life of some 16 Filipinas living and working in Singapore. It would have been even more impressive with better editing though, especially in the multimedia slideshows. There’s just a bit too much going on to keep me watching till the end.

Food Waste Republic is an investigative journalism piece that looks at food wastage in Singapore through feature stories, multimedia slideshows and quotes from experts. Readers are also encouraged to interact with the project by submiting photos to the “Food Waste Police”. The team of Estelle Low, Miak Aw and Chen Wei Li have really put in a lot of effort, even going through people’s rubbish to document the extent of the problem. While surfing the website, one thing that kept going off in my mind was, where does journalism end and advocacy start? I wondered if this project is a campaign to reduce food wastage rather than a journalism piece, especially with snazzy look of the website and the attempt to ‘police’ food wastage. But then, is there a difference between the two? Shouldn’t all journalists care a lot about the topic they write for?

On this note about caring and journalism I like to point to an encouraging initiative going in my alma mater: Photojournalism@NTU. I’m not sure if it’ll become an annual event, but photojournalism students this year got a chance to showcase their works and meet fellow photojournalists and editors in the industry in this networking session. I saw a lot of great work out there — all photo essays about Singapore. The current instructor, Tay Kay Chin, has promised to continue pushing these young photojournalists to point their lenses at what’s going on here instead of exotic foreign lands. I really agree that there are too many stories untold here.

And after seeing all the work of these young journalists, I wondered why is it that our local newspapers remain so staid? Whether it is in terms of topics, or the medium, one finds it hard to consistently detect the vigour as seen in these students’ works. There is good news, especially for photojournalists. When asked about photojournalism’s place in The Straits Times during the session, its photo editor said that a micro-site was coming up soon on ST’s website that will showcase multimedia slideshows and photo essays from their photojournalists. They may accept works from the public too.

Other than that, I’m not confident anything else is really going to change. For one, the people right up there making decisions have been there for years (Sumiko Tan wrote about her jubilee at the organisation in today’s Sunday Times, and she’s not the only one, nor the longest). And, without competition here, hardly anything changes as my research on ST’s newspaper redesign has shown.

For me, the saddest part about all this is not that I may never get to read a great Singaporean newspaper. But, I may never see these young journalists’ byline beyond their final-year projects because they gave up chasing stories for a paper that will never showcase them in a manner that they truly deserve.

“It was like a scene in the movies…”

“It was like a scene in the movies. There were glass shards everywhere… everyone was shocked and confused. I didn’t care what happened, I was only thinking ‘Danger, get out, get out!’ I jumped on my bike and rode off.’

Usman, a 48-year-old motorcycle taxi driver

This quote from a witness of the Jarkata bombings in today’s Straits Times reminded me of a CNN documentary I watched earlier this year about the 9/11 terror attacks in America. In CNN Tribute – America Remembers (2002), a eye-witness of the attacks also likened what he saw to a movie scene. It’s as if the movies, and the media, has defined our definition of what terror and destruction is. This is how the media helps us see what we cannot see now, so that when we see it, we know how to make sense of it.

But isn’t it a bit disturbing that we can make sense of so much destruction and carnage? Might this be how we get de-sensitised to it all? The next time this happens, it would be… just like in the movies.

That being the case, shouldn’t we as media producers pay more attention to what we show and how we show it?  This is no call for censorship, but we should take more responsibility over what we create. There is a need to have a deeper understanding of our craft and the effects it produces. Each frame and word we create has an impact. So call a spade, a spade, but know why you’re even putting in a spade.

The rewards of the long tail

This semester I had to take a module in media management and one of the biggest things affecting it today is without a doubt the digital age. Unfortunately, I think the class failed terribly to address this development and in the midst of studying for the exam, I found a Economist.com podcast interview with Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, the best half-an-hour lesson on the future developments of the media market.

In essence, the changes in the media market can be explained by the long tail (see left), a demand curve for products. Mainstream media’s revenue currently mainly comes from a select group of products or hits such as the music industry earning most of their revenue from a pop star like Britney. In the new media landscape however, as costs and barrier in producing and distributing media decrease, the market can sustain a greater variety in products and creates niche markets such as indie music. Thus, in order to maximise revenue, media companies should go for volume instead of specialisation, offering greater variety to its consumers and thus earn the new media revenue too.

On another note, here are a list of great events coming up (the rewards of a long tail economy?) that I plan to attend for my own reference and so that people can find out about them too. Most of them are related to design and architecture because theSingapore Design Festival 2007 (coincidentally, similar colour scheme with this site!) and ArchiFest 2007 is happening these couple of weeks.

• Signature Singapore… Old Forms, New Options | 6 Dec, 10am – 8pm |
  This one-day conference shall discuss and explore the notion of “Signature Singapore”. What makes Singapore unique from other world cities? What is Singapore’s signature urbanscape? How best could planners and the development industry contribute to strengthening Signature Singapore?
  <http://www.archifest.sg/web/fringeevents.html>

• Singapore 1:1 Island | 17th Nov – 31st Mar | URA Centre
  A look at architecture in Singapore from 1965 onwards to tracks its economic and social progress.
  <http://www.ura.gov.sg/spore1_1/>

• Screening of “Opera Jawa” by Garin Nugroho | 4th Dec, 730pm | National Museum
  As part of the Singapore International Film Festival Fundraiser, which has no main sponsor for the upcoming festival, this particular screening is a musical film inspired by the “The Abduction of Sita”, a classic found in the Ramayana. [Error corrected]

• The Way of Asian Design | 30th Nov, Fri, 930am – 530pm | NTU ADM
  A 1-day Panel and Seminar on design from the Asian perspective
  < Find out more >

• Have you ever smell the rain | 20th – 30th Nov | Forth Art Gallery
  A 3rd solo painting exhibition by Tay Bee Aye. In this series of works Tay examines the notion of happiness and belief, questioning whether our senses are being corrupted, on how information are being process and use as a gauge to measure our happiness.
  <http://www.forth.sg/exhibition.htm>

• Dual City Sessions: Null| 27th Nov – 8th Dec |
  Collaboration between Japan and Singapore artists
  <http://www.dualcitysessions.com/>