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| Marina Mahathir sells papers, like it or not! Graphic courtesy The Star, with thanks to Helen Ang for the insight h e r e. |
Not that long ago, the New Straits Times was the English-language newspaper in Malaysia. It was the flagship of the NSTP group. The best writers wrote for this 169-year paper and the best journalists wanted to be on its payroll. Many of the media industry's leaders today came from NST: Ho Kay Tat (the Edge), Jahabar Saddiq (The Malaysian Insider), Shamsul Akmar (The Malaysian Reserve): Nuraina Samad (The Mole); and Ashraf Abdullah (TV3), to name a few.
Now former DGE NST is not what it used to be now. There are good journalists in there, still, and thank god for that, but the paper's been losing more and more readers. I fear that following the latest Mutual Separation Scheme, in which gems like Azmi Anshar ("one of the sharpest pens of our time ...") and Deputy Group Editor Rashid Yusof will pack their laptops and go, it will be a steep climb for the paper, if it manages to stop the slide in the first place.
I hope I am wrong.
Well, the good news is I hear that Rashid Yusof is planning to start a news portal that will help restore our faith in professional and non-partisan journalism in the Malaysian cyberspace. Rashid, who has been a journalsit for close to 30 years, used to advise Daim Zainuddin and later Khairy Jamaluddin on media matters.