Sunday, August 19, 2007
Reporters leaving The Star?
I was at a media function last week and a reporter from the Star, confided in me that the country's largest English-daily newspaper is fast losing its prized reporters. Apparently the days of six months ex-gratia bonuses are long gone and reporters, so used to those fat bonuses in the past, are not satisfied about the current status quo. The New Straits Times, for a long time the poor cousin of The Star are now willing to pay an extra thousand Ringgit to entice reporters to cross over to Jalan Riong from Section 16.
The Star is reputed to have lost a promising young journalist from the Malacca bureau as well another one from its Ipoh office, just in the last few days. Or so i heard. An exodus may well pick up steam, as reporters realise that they cannot survive on the measly basic salaries in the big cities. The discrepancy is startling; a reporter with about two years of experience and affinity for the job who agree to jump to the NST, can see his salary rise by 70 percent in one swoop to about RM2,500 while an experienced, hardworking Star reporter, after 11 years, may still only pick up less than RM3,000.
The top management at The Star is probably worried about this chain of events although they will put up a brave face. Besides losing reporters, they also need to be worried about the better quality stories that the NST and The Sun have been writing about. The Sun, for example, has succeeded in winning over advertisers with its unique free newspaper business model, which even people like Rupert Murdoch had grudgingly acknowledged as a threat to the tradtional newspaper business model. I generally find the content in the NST more appealing than the Star. The NST, being an UMNO newspaper, probably has more leeway in pushing the limits right now, in order to win market share it lost to the Star earlier in the game. The MCA mouthpiece has been very compliant to its political masters since it was punished in 1987. I recall when as a rookie Star reporter, I mentioned to a senior editor why we had to listen to the "political masters", he took umbrage to this and went out of his way to convince me that this is not true. A rookie I was but a fool I am not. ¶ 3:50 PM
The Star is reputed to have lost a promising young journalist from the Malacca bureau as well another one from its Ipoh office, just in the last few days. Or so i heard. An exodus may well pick up steam, as reporters realise that they cannot survive on the measly basic salaries in the big cities. The discrepancy is startling; a reporter with about two years of experience and affinity for the job who agree to jump to the NST, can see his salary rise by 70 percent in one swoop to about RM2,500 while an experienced, hardworking Star reporter, after 11 years, may still only pick up less than RM3,000.
The top management at The Star is probably worried about this chain of events although they will put up a brave face. Besides losing reporters, they also need to be worried about the better quality stories that the NST and The Sun have been writing about. The Sun, for example, has succeeded in winning over advertisers with its unique free newspaper business model, which even people like Rupert Murdoch had grudgingly acknowledged as a threat to the tradtional newspaper business model. I generally find the content in the NST more appealing than the Star. The NST, being an UMNO newspaper, probably has more leeway in pushing the limits right now, in order to win market share it lost to the Star earlier in the game. The MCA mouthpiece has been very compliant to its political masters since it was punished in 1987. I recall when as a rookie Star reporter, I mentioned to a senior editor why we had to listen to the "political masters", he took umbrage to this and went out of his way to convince me that this is not true. A rookie I was but a fool I am not. ¶ 3:50 PM
