Sales, Social and Tech

Singapore Press Holding (SPH) released their 2016 Annual Report and their daily average circulation for their print newspaper continue to nosedive southwards. Digital subscription has gone up significantly but pales in comparison with total Singapore Internet Users. Print 2016 2015 YtoY Straits Times/Sunday Times 277,100 304,300 -8.94% Business Times 28,100 29,200 -3.77% Berita Harian / Berita Minggu 37,700 44,600 -15.47% New Paper 61,700 70,200 -12.11% Lianhe Zabao 143,000 148,600 -3.77% Lianhe Wanbao 70,800 82,500 -14.18% Shin Min Daily 100,100 120,200 -16.72% Source: http://sph.listedcompany.com/misc/annualreport/2016b/SPH_AR2016_daily_average.pdf) At a high of 389,300 in 2008, the daily average print circulation for the Straits Times / Sunday Times has dropped to 277,100 in 2016. 300,000 has always been the magic number for The Straits Times, especially in getting advertising dollars. With an estimated pass on rate of 3, most ad sales folks will share that the ...

Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) released its 2013 Annual Report and circulation figures for its print dailies took a huge beating as readers go digital. To read more, please go here .

The Straits Times was found to have made use of a photo without the explicit permission from the photo taker. The photo was taken from STOMP, Singapore Press Holdings' citizen journalism site, which also chose to publish on the website without proper attribution. Singapore Press Holdings is also the publisher of The Straits Times. Wrote Lucian in his email to The Straits Times' photo editor, Stephanie Yeow, "...All I can say is that this is a straightforward case of intellectual property theft from an organisation that ought to know better. I believe in the openness of the Internet and have contributed a significant amount of content via Creative Commons licenses. SPH is a for-profit company that cannot beat on the intellectual property drum with one hand, and use online content without attribution or proper compensation whenever it feels like it. This is gone on for far too long, and I am appalled at the lack of ethics. You had my name, my number, and I ...

As I was reading the The AIMS-Town Council issues via the blogs, it hit upon me that the way we search and consumed our news has totally change. Thanks to both technology and non-technological reasons. Dr Teo Ho Pin released his 26 paragraph rebuttal as a press release and Facebook Post Before Facebook, before Internet, one had to wait for the print media to report on releases. Radio and TV had the upper hand as they could release it earlier on air. But now, the release is made via a Facebook Post  where everyone can like, share and comment. In doing any of this three, the news would be easily spread from friend to friend. Back then, without the Internet, the only way to share the news was to pass the newspaper to a friend. There would be coffee shop talk but comments usually disperse at the speed of sound. Newspaper report, bloggers analyse  This is where the local newspaper struggle. I believe there are some journalists who would like to go deeper into the story ...

Singapore Press Holdings has released its 2012 annual report and almost of it dailies are experiencing significant falls in circulation figures. Berita Harihan, which saw growth in August 2011, experienced the biggest drop in circulation figures by 9.0% in August 2012. LianHe ZaoBao, Tamil Murasu and The Business Times, which also saw growth last year, contracted in 2012. For the first time in its report, Singapore Press Holdings have combined the circulation figures of The Straits Times and The Sunday Times. If one were to take the average circulation between The Straits Times and The Sunday Times in August 2011 (370,100), the circulation for both papers would have fallen by 4.86% in August 2012. You can read the report here .   Aug-07 Aug-08 Aug-09 Aug-10 Aug-11 Aug-12 Aug 2011 - Aug 2012 Berita Harihan 61,800 62,000 60,900 58,900 59,200 53,900 -9.0% LianHe WanBao 122,400 107,200 1...

Bertha Henson, a former editor for The Straits Times, recently wrote an obituary of a former colleague on her blog which Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) disagreed on certain points noted on the post. The email from SPH also took an opportunity to take a swipe at the blogger rather than focusing on the post. Wrote Bertha Henson , " My old company is pissed at the obituary I wrote for Chong Chee Kin. (See earlier entry Goodbye Cheeks) Journalists and management are upset that I said that Chee Kin felt like a pariah in his last week at work in SPH ." The anonymous letter from SPH went on to criticise Bertha. Wrote the SPH letter from an anonymous signoff, " You  have been wholly unfair to SPH to put this out in your blog without checking whether it is true. You have in fact failed to practise what you have been preaching so piously in your blog ." Bertha responded to SPH in her blog by stating that she wrote the "pariah" bit from the sms she r...