Journalist or activist? - Malaysiakini co-founder and editor-in-chief Steven Gan interview in theSun Weekend

:: theSun Weekend | 11 Dec 2004 ::
Malaysiakini.com, the controversial website, turned five last month. JENNY NG and CINDY THAM speak to its co-founder and editor-in-chief Steven Gan, 43, to get his views on criticisms against malaysiakini as well as the changes and development the site is undergoing as it moves into its next phase. Prior to starting malaysiakini, Gan was an editorial writer at The Nation in Bangkok. He was with theSun from 1994 to 1996.
In 2001, Gan won the Free Media Pioneer 2001 award, given by the International Press Institute, as well as being selected as one of BusinessWeek's 50 "Stars of Asia". Last year, he made the list of Asia Inc's "Who's hot in Asia?"

You started a course in architecture in Australia but switched to political studies. Why?
When I was in the architecture faculty in New South Wales University, I got very interested in architecture which uses local and simple materials. I was very much interested in low-cost housing and in issues like using bamboo and timber -- you know, things that are environmentally friendly.

However, what I was learning at that time was mostly building glass boxes, tower blocks and all that, so I felt that it wasn't really what I wanted. Apart from having lengthy arguments with my lecturers, I was also "politicised" by the fact that the architectural courses were not offering courses that are suitable for students like myself who are from Asia.

One of the courses offered was world architecture, but what I found was mostly areas that involved gothic, European and [other] Western architecture. It was presumptuous of them to consider Western architecture as world architecture. And we felt that it was also racist of them to consider that the West is the model to follow.

So, we campaigned and got all the Asian students to sign a petition. We fought against the faculty and we said that "Look, this is racist", and that we don't want that course to continue. Eventually we won, the faculty decided to rename that course from world architecture to Western architecture and they hired someone from Hongkong for a new course called Eastern architecture.

Though it was a small issue, for a lot of us, it opened up our eyes -- especially students from Malaysia, and there were quite a lot of them doing architecture at that time -- and it helped us to see, politicised us to a certain extent. A few of us, we went on to campaign against racism especially at that time; there were attacks on Asian immigration. On top of that, the Australian government was trying to impose full course fees on overseas students. We also campaigned against that. That was how a few of us got active in political issues and from there on to link up with students in Asia.

In those days [the 80s], Thai students were fighting against the military regime there, Nepali students were fighting against the absolute monarchy -- they were calling for multi-party democracy and, of course, [there was the] Tiananmen [incident] in China. Burma also was a big issue and so was East Timor. So, that's how we managed to work with them and somehow help support what they were struggling for.

So was that why you switched from architecture to political studies?
It was partly because of that. Since I spent so much time on activist work and not enough [on finishing] my architecture course, I switched to politics [and] economics. My first day in the economics course was a real motivation because the lecturer came in and told the class of about 30, 40 of us: "Look, if you guys are here because you want to study economics so that you can be rich one day, how to make money and all that, then you've come to the wrong class. But if you're here because you want to find out why people are poor and what are the causes of poverty, then please stay."

He went on to debunk mostly free-market economics. That was an eye-opener for me and I thought, "Wow, this is what I want to do." I completed the course and the rest is history. After that, I travelled around Asia and writing was a means to support myself. The years when I was a student activist, I managed to establish contact with quite a lot of students in Thailand, China, Japan, East Timor and all that, Indonesia. So, it was easy for me to travel a bit.

You then moved on to become a freelance journalist in Hongkong?
That's right. I wasn't trained as a journalist. I chose to write because I thought that somehow I can actually make money from writing and I did mostly travel pieces, feature pieces and sometimes economic as well as political pieces, selling them to newspapers and magazines. It was hard. I was more or less a backpacker journalist. I bunked with people I know. That was how I, more or less, survived.

You left Malaysia twice to practise journalism.
I left Malaysia once, actually. When I was in Australia, I went straight to Hongkong; I never came back to Malaysia. It was after Hongkong that I came back, in 1994, 1995. That was when I joined theSun.

What brought you back to Malaysia after Hongkong?
Well, having travelled around for four, five years, you decide maybe it's time for, you know, having seen enough, you decide it's time to come back. That was what I did and I thought that perhaps I might also help in making a small contribution to Malaysian journalism. That was one of the reasons I joined theSun.

Having worked abroad in Hongkong and Bangkok as well as Malaysia, what striking differences did you see in how journalism is practised in these places?
Yeah, the second time I left Malaysia was after theSun -- that was when I went to Bangkok. So, I sort of left twice, in that sense.

I think it's quite clear that Malaysian journalism still has a long way to go. Malaysian journalism has a curious mix. On one hand, we are quite professional. We do produce pretty high standards of journalism to a certain extent, and I say this including mainstream journalism. But then, the other problem with journalism in Malaysia is that when we talk about certain political issues, especially opposition politics or certain companies, then that professionalism has not been applied. So, I think that's where the problem is: Our professionalism is not applied evenly to all cases and all, you know, whatever that we do.

To a certain extent, when it comes to covering, say, for instance, an accident, we do a professional job, we double check our facts, make sure that we get the number of people injured correct, number of people who died correct. We talk to the police, we talk to the hospital, you know, all that stuff; but when it comes to covering, for instance, opposition politics, that's when we don't apply that kind of journalism, or certain companies that somehow have strong links with the ruling politicians, then we don't apply that kind of professionalism. That's where we're lacking.

Compared with your experience in Thailand and Hongkong?
Yeah, definitely, in Thailand, you can see that the professionalism is there. There is high appreciation for press freedom in those countries, especially in Thailand, by journalists themselves -- that they know press freedom is important, that it is their life blood and that they need to defend any attacks against press freedom. And in so doing, they ensure that they continue to do a professional job because they need the support from the public. If they don't do that, then you lose support from the public.

You came back in 1999 and started malaysiakini. What inspired malaysiakini? How did that come about?
I came back because I had always wanted to. (Pauses) I had never left Malaysian journalism. I left for Bangkok mostly because (pauses) ... there were problems between me and the [then] editor in theSun and all that. I had my own views in terms of how it should be done.

So you went to Bangkok, but even from Bangkok you wrote about Malaysia? Yeah, mostly. So, I never really left Malaysia per se. Even when I was at The Nation, I was writing editorials mostly on Malaysia to the point that, I think, the MCA [Malaysian Chinese Association] was not too happy with some of the editorials that I wrote.

In fact, at one point, I think they called a press conference in Malaysia complaining about some of the pieces I had written though I don't think, at that time, they knew it was me who wrote those editorials. But somehow they felt: Why is this Thai newspaper getting so roused up or getting so worked up about Malaysia?

And at that time, Malaysia was one of the major interests because of the fact that you've got the Reformasi movement, you've got Anwar [Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim] being sacked, you've got the economic crisis. So it was interesting times.

And definitely, Thailand was interested in what was happening in Malaysia and I just came in at the right time. And because I know Malaysia like the back of my hand, I was asked to write editorials on Malaysia. In a sense, I never left Malaysian politics. I was still very much interested in and kept in touch with what was happening in Malaysia.

Of course in 1998, apart from the economic crisis, in addition to the sacking of Anwar Ibrahim and all that, there was the mushrooming of the Internet. Internet websites were being launched, mostly Reformasi websites and all that, partly because of the fact that there was unhappiness with, you know, how the mainstream media were covering the issue.

People were looking for alternative news. And so myself and Prem [malaysiakini's chief executive officer Premesh Chandran] -- Prem was a former colleague who was working at theSun, he left to join the MTUC [Malaysian Trade Union Congress] as a research officer -- kept in touch and decided that maybe it was time for us to launch a professional website and that was what we did.

The whole idea of malaysiakini is, while you have a lot of political websites on current issues, there was not one particular website that was actually professionally run by journalists. We decided this would be what we would want to do -- that the Internet should be not just a place where you have rumour mongering and all that; that you have a website that can be a trusted source of information; that journalists who work for malaysiakini double check our facts before we upload our stories. We apply the same type of journalistic principles in the mainstream media to malaysiakini as well. That's what we intended to do and I think we achieved that.

You use the term "mainstream media" quite a bit. How would you define mainstream and how's malaysiakini different?
(Laughs) I think we're becoming mainstream now. When we started, definitely there was this dichotomy there between malaysiakini and big newspapers like The Star, New Straits Times, Berita Harian, Utusan Malaysia and all that. I would prefer to use the word "traditional" and Malaysiakini as new media. That's how I would prefer to describe it, rather than "mainstream", but then somehow, the word "mainstream" stuck.

But when one uses the word "mainstream", does it presume or connote a stand that is pro-establishment?
I think that's the problem with Malaysia, like it or not. You have a situation where media companies are directly or indirectly linked to the government or political parties per se, or through owners who are very close to the ruling politicians. You know, you cannot run away from that and that's why, somehow, we'll have to address that issue, really.

I think problems with Malaysian journalism are that the media landscape is being shaped by two major factors: One is the law -- we all know that. We've restrictive laws that directly or indirectly impinge on press freedoms. I think there're about 30, 35 laws out there.

The other one is ownership. I think that's something that perhaps a lot of people know, though it's not said enough. If you look at our newspapers, Utusan is directly owned by Umno [United Malays National Organisation], The Star is directly owned by MCA, which is something that's unusual in other countries.

And, of course, you have other newspapers that are indirectly owned, for instance, New Straits Times, though you cannot pin it down that it's owned by Umno.

So, I think you cannot run away from that and it does affect how news is being covered and what kinds of opinions are being expressed in all these newspapers. I am per se not against ownership of newspapers by political parties. I think you know in some other countries, there are newspapers owned by certain parties, and Malaysia is no different although it's not that common, but I'm not against that per se.

What I'd like to see is that ownership should be liberalised to the point where anyone who wants to own a newspaper or anyone who wants to set up a newspaper can do so and it's up to the readers, Malaysians, to decide what newspapers they want to buy. There has to be some competition of ideas, of different ownership and only then, through that, can you reach a lot closer to the truth -- [it] may not be the whole truth but at least people can compare the opinion of different newspapers and build their own opinions on certain issues, important issues that affect us.

We've applied for a licence for a weekly, it's been two years now and so far, no news on that and I don't think we're going to get it.

Some people say malaysiakini is very pro-opposition.
We're pro-opposition by default, not so much because it was our aim to be pro-opposition. I think we do not have direct access to a lot of political parties and to the ruling politicians. A lot of them are scared to talk to malaysiakini; I can say it openly. We've tried to get interviews with key people and often, it's been turned down. I think also by default we are seen as pro-opposition because of the issues we felt strongly about.

While malaysiakini is non-partisan, in the sense that we're not operating under the influence of any party, we're not owned by any political party and we don't support any political parties, we're non-partisan but it doesn't mean that we're apolitical.

We feel strongly on a lot of issues -- issues like democracy, independence of the judiciary, human rights, press freedom, anti-corruption, good governance and all that. And we do take a strong stance on all those issues. So in that sense, over the past few years, like it or not, all those issues have been raised by the opposition and [we] have been seen as pro-opposition every time we make an opinion on those issues.

But do you think it's necessarily wrong for any media to have a particular leaning or some degree of sympathy or support for any side, whether it's ruling or opposition?
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think that in the Malaysian environment, it will be very hard for you to claim to be independent if you're seen to be supporting a certain side. That's something you cannot run away from.

As I said, when it comes to certain issues, we do take a strong stance. Even, say, for instance, an election, who to vote for, we'd say we want a strong opposition, we won't say vote for DAP [Democratic Action Party] or vote for Keadilan or vote for PAS [Parti Islam Se-Malaysia]. It's up to Malaysians to decide. We'd want a strong opposition to at least provide some check and balance to the government. That's our policy, really. We want to see, at least, that democracy is enhanced. And that the ways to enhance democracy are there.

When you started out, did you see yourself as an alternative' media?
Yes, I think that was the main aim of malaysiakini: to provide, perhaps, a different way of seeing things, and also opinions which were not reflected in the traditional media, and also to push the envelope of freedom as far as we can within limits, and we all know there are limits there. Because laws that apply to traditional media also apply on the Internet, and that includes malaysiakini, and our aim is to push it as far as we can.

There were times when we went a bit too far. For instance, the raid on malaysiakini. There was a letter that we published, though we defended the letter and we still feel that it was the right thing to do. But as I said, they can use current laws against us. At that time, they used the Sedition Act.

That caused an uproar and it was seen to be an attempt by the authorities to harass malaysiakini. But don't you think the police had the right to do that because you are still within the jurisdiction of Malaysian laws and they had the right to investigate if there were complaints?
In that regard, fair enough, I think the government was applying the law, but I think it was really using the law against press freedom. I think a lot of the public support we got at that time, including journalists, felt that the government was going too far, that they need not have taken away all of our computers, for instance. Though, of course, the police will say, we cannot trust you, we don't know exactly which computer to take, I think they do realise that they haven't got a case to answer for. Otherwise, I would have been charged. So far, I haven't been charged and I don't think I'll be charged under the act.

So, it was very much overkill. Something like that, it could be resolved by, for instance, Umno Youth writing us a letter, expressing their viewpoints against this letter writer because this letter writer was more or less criticising Umno Youth, equating them to KKK [the Ku Klux Klan] and all that.

Some say that malaysiakini is more of an activist, a socio-political organisation than a news organisation and that you're an activist using journalism to pursue your causes.
In history, there are lots of journalists who are activists. Even in Malaysia, during the fight against colonialism, newspapers and journalists were openly expressing their opinion against colonialism. They were campaigning for independence.

So, I think there has always been that tradition, that journalists do take a strong stand on certain issues and express themselves openly. And if you translate that to the current situation today, you've got issues that impact Malaysia greatly -- issues like anti-corruption, corruption per se, issues of good governance, contracts being given out without an open-tender system, all that stuff. I think journalists should be allowed to express their opinions on all these issues. Issues like democracy and human rights, and abuse of power.

Though I think there's definitely a difference between news reporting and opinion pieces and editorials. I think malaysiakini has abided to that dichotomy, that when it comes to news stories, we'll try to be as removed as possible, as objective as possible, though there's no such word as "objectivism", but we'll try to give both sides of the story, we'll double check our facts.

I think journalism has changed quite substantially perhaps [compared] to the situation 10, 20 years ago. Now, readers would want us to give them a complete picture of how a particular [piece of] news is related to something that happened before and how it's going to impact us in the future. It's not like, for instance, that they want just a report of a certain incident that happened. I think that's where journalism will have to use a lot of interpreting skills.

Sometimes, it can be difficult. Sometimes, in terms of interpreting a news story, we may be wrong. That's something that journalists will have to upgrade their skills to the point where they're not just reporters, but they are journalists in the sense that they know the issue pretty well to be able to interpret it correctly for our readers. And it is really a difficult thing to do.

And I think with malaysiakini and a lot of the other newspapers, we're facing that problem, in the sense that what readers want today is more than what they wanted 20 years ago. They want us to explain to them not just what happened, a particular incident or event but also explain to them, give them the full picture of how that event is going to impact them and how it's going to relate to all the other events that's happening. You need to be skilful to be able to do that correctly. That's a challenge not just for malaysiakini journalists but it's a challenge for all journalists.

Given your activist leanings, do you see yourself as a pure news organisation? How are you guys different from an organisation like Aliran, which is an NGO that publishes a monthly and runs a website as well?
I see malaysiakini as a professional set-up because malaysiakini's been run by professional journalists, people are trained in journalism. If you look at the whole lot of us, all of us have spent time with traditional media. We've been trained. Those who have not been trained -- people who are first-time journalists -- we will train them [in] the journalistic skills that's necessary for them to do a proper job. So we see ourselves very much as a news organisation.

When it comes to reporting news, we will apply the same kind of journalistic principles that would be applied in traditional media all around the world.

How are we different from Aliran?
I think Aliran is very much an opinion journal. While we are not just solely an opinion journal, we report news. We have daily news and of course, we have opinion pieces, letters and all that. If you look at malaysiakini, we very much organise ourselves no different from traditional media. The news desk's been run just like the newsroom in any other media organisation. In terms of news reporting and news coverage, we double check our facts, make sure that we contact both sides of the story. If we're wrong, we apologise for it. We'd make sure that there'd be prompt acknowledgement of certain mistakes that we make.

So you don't think malaysiakini is in any way being selective in how it reports its news, your tagline being "Only news that matters"?
We are selective. In a newsroom, not just malaysiakini, but also say The Star, theSun, New Straits Times, you have only certain number of stories that you think you can do no matter how well resourced you are. But I think with malaysiakini, our main problem is lack of resources. We have six journalists, six right now, and there're only certain number of stories that we can follow at any particular time. We would take out stories that we think other people can do better than us or that within our own editorial policy, they may not be that important. In that sense, there's already a selective mechanism there.

There're a lot of stories that we do not cover, we do not cover sports for instance, we do not cover accidents, crime, unless it becomes a major issue. In that sense, we're very, very selective. We're focused on mostly covering areas that we think we can do better than the traditional media. Areas like, for instance, politics, [in] which we think that the traditional media would practise a lot more self-censorship.

In that sense, we think we can do better than them. For instance, the Anwar issue, even now, when he was in prison, on trial and all that, we do give it more focus because of the fact that we think we can do better than the traditional media, not just in terms of reporting that particular event but in terms of opinions. So, we are very selective, we know quite clearly what are the issues that we want to cover on that particular day.

Definitely, there were times when we wanted to have more people; there are a lot of things happening. But even then, we know that given our human resources, we cannot do everything. We focus on the few key issues and that's why our tagline is "News and views that matter", it's no longer "Only news that matters". We have launched a new logo, a new tagline.

Malaysiakini thrives on hot issues like the general election, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's release, the Perwaja trial. If the political and social environment were to change, do you think malaysiakini would continue to remain just as relevant?
(Laughs) Well, you can ask me that question in five or 10 years' time! (Chuckles) I have hopes that there would be changes, otherwise I won't continue doing this. Otherwise, it would be more or less wasting my time. I can better use my time to do something else. But I do think that changes will come though I cannot predict when ... I think there's already some changes over the past one, two years. I think what we need to do is to continue putting pressure on the authorities to continue the reforms that they promise and also reforms that they talk about often. Hopefully, there will come a time when there is complete liberalisation of ownership and press freedom, where certain laws are repealed.

If you look at countries like Indonesia, there is hope that Malaysia cannot continue to ignore the advances made in other countries, that you know, like it or not, we will have to have press freedom because of the fact that Malaysians demand press freedom. And it could be five, 10 years' time; I've no idea. By that time, if there's liberalisation of media, I'd see malaysiakini becoming more or less traditional media. We'll become the mainstream. We'll continue on but I think, at that time, it'll be a different ball game.

You mentioned ownership several times as having a strong influence on a paper's direction. What about malaysiakini? An opposition politician Sivarasa Rasiah contributed financially to the starting up of malaysiakini.

Sivarasa is one of the many shareholders of malaysiakini. I don't know how many shareholders we have, I think it's 50, 100, whatever it is. I think, let's not mention names, we get pressure from all sides. I think malaysiakini has always been faithful to the fact that we would not succumb to any pressure. If the opposition happens to be in power, you still need press freedom and I think, like it or not, there will be some people in opposition who will want to restrict press freedom, who will want the media to report what they say only and not what the opposition [says]; in that case, it will be BN [Barisan Nasional]. If BN is out of power, they would welcome support from malaysiakini, for instance.

It really doesn't matter whether it's opposition or government, what is important is that the media organisation per se should not be able to succumb to that kind of pressure, they need to report certain issues as they feel necessary, as they see right.

Under a new administration now, has there been any change in access to the establishment?
Not much. We've written to a few ministers [for interviews] and so far, one of them has rejected and the others are not answering. I think a lot of them are not just worried about how it's being perceived talking to us but I think also worried about the kind of questions we will ask them. When it comes to Q&A, we do ask tough questions. I'd like to see malaysiakini very much like the BBC's Hard Talk kind of situation, [where] we hold politicians accountable for their actions, for what they are not doing. Just like what we did with an interview with the Election Commission chief, for instance, just before the election. It was an open interview and he did say a lot of interesting issues involving the elections and his job.

Those are the ways we'd like to interview personalities and politicians. In terms of access, we still have problems getting into certain press conferences; we still do not have our official press tags. That's been rejected, we've been pursuing it, but so far, still no positive response to malaysiakini journalists getting official press tags. That definitely restricts our access especially going into certain press conferences.

What about journalism in general? Do you see any change in the way reports are written about the government and the opposition?
I think yes. I wouldn't deny that. We see for instance, The New Straits Times attempting to stem their losses in terms of readership by changing, partly, the layout with the compact version but also in terms of their coverage of certain issues. I think it's a good thing. Competition among media organisations is really a good thing and I would like to see more of that.

In that sense, I think malaysiakini is giving the traditional media some competition, so we help Malaysians get a broader perspective on issues and you'd be able to expose corruption or certain projects that had not been completed and all that. It's a good thing for Malaysians, in general. Otherwise, they'd be hidden and we're not aware of what's going on.

You have said that if things don't work out within five years, Malaysiakini would be wrapped up.
Did I say that (laughing)?

You reportedly said that. You can refute it.
(Laughs) Sorry, go on.

Well, you just turned five. Do you see malaysiakini continuing beyond the fifth-year mark, and will there be changes?
To answer your first question, we're planning for another five years, we're not throwing in our towels. There has been really hard times, keeping ourselves afloat. We've sometimes no idea whether we'd be able to survive the next month, let alone the next year. We've been very conservative in terms of our operations, we do not want to expand too much to the point where we'll be in deep debt. We've kept our operations very small, lean and mean, and try not to overrun our operation costs. Even moving to this new building, we had to really think twice. Luckily, the rent is not that much different from what we've been paying. That helps.

I think we've been very, very mindful of our operation costs. As you know, a lot of dotcoms have folded because they've been spending money. We've been quite conservative when it comes to spending money. We have to make sure our income commensurate with our expenses. In those five years, looking back, we managed to break even and we want to continue to break even.

As for new plans, definitely as you have more income, you'll be able to expand more. And the kind of expansion we want to get into, at least for the year or so, includes a Bahasa Malaysia version of malaysiakini, and then a Chinese version, that will be launched later in the year or early next year.

Next year onwards, there'll be a few new projects which I'm not at liberty to announce yet. Basically, we're expanding not in a big way but slowly. We want to be, perhaps, the first newspaper to cover news in the three key languages -- English, Malay and Chinese. Partly because we realise that we're not going to get our print publication.

In fact, last year, we were gearing towards, whatever money that we make, we'll invest in the monthly print publication. We decided we won't be getting licensed for it, so we're now changing our focus back to the Internet operation with a Malay website as well as Chinese website and then we'll go from there.

If a print licence is given to us later on, we'll evaluate and change our planning accordingly but for now we're refocusing ourselves completely to the Internet operations.

Will the Malay and Chinese sites carry the same things?
They will be carrying mostly the same content, mostly a translation but there'll be a few additional pieces that will be done by an additional journalist that we're hiring. The Malay [site] will have one new journalist as well as the Chinese [site].

In 2001, malaysiakini's source of financing created a controversy. In terms of financing, do you still get external funds?
We still get some funding from SEAPA [Southeast Asian Press Alliance]. This is the one that somehow [gets] blown out of proportion. The link between Soros and SEAPA ... people say that we get money from Soros. That's not true. I don't want to go back to this old issue but anyway, let me just explain it. Soros' foundation did pay an adviser in SEAPA and that's about it, really. The money that SEAPA is giving us doesn't come from Soros' foundation. So in that sense, SEAPA is actually getting money from a few sources and the money that they get from Soros is actually to pay one person within the organisation. The link is not there; it's just that somehow, it gets a bit murky. We continue to get funding from SEAPA, SEAPA would raise money for us.

Initially, it was seed funding -- it was for the first few years because they decided that they wanted to continue funding us, because they felt that it was important for them to fund us. And it's good because it helps us to ensure that we can continue on, because like it or not, our subscription income only represents about 50% of our operation costs. So, on subscription alone, we're still not breaking even yet. It is growing [and] we hope to break even on subscription alone, hopefully by next year. We'll see how it goes.

So subscription has gone up?
Yes, it has gone up. It's growing about 5% to 10% every month. We'd like to see it growing much, much faster but there are limitations there. Perhaps with more and more people being able to get broadband, hopefully you'll see malaysiakini benefiting from that. I think when you've got a 3% penetration rate when it comes to broadband, it's going to be very difficult to convince people to subscribe. Partly because, if you look at other countries, for a subscriber to be subscribing to a particular website, most of them would spend at least two to three hours a day on the Internet. And it's difficult for someone relying on dial-up to spend that much time on the Internet. So in that sense, I think we're still being limited by that problem, the fact that a lot of Malaysians are relying on dial-up.

What about the SMS login service where users get a one-day subscription for RM2.50? Is that picking up? Is there a demand for it?
That one, I wouldn't say it's a gimmick. I think telecommunication companies are the ones making the most money from it, not small companies like us. The service itself ... (pauses) I think they take away 30% to 50% of the money we collect. So, SMS is not a way for us to really make money unless you get about one million people, just like one of those contest things, but even then telcos are the ones making half of it.

What's malaysiakini's readership profile like?
The last survey that we did, a lot of them are over 35. We have a pretty old readership profile, surprisingly. Initially, we thought we were targeting young people who are Internet savvy, who have no problems reading news from the Internet. That wasn't the case. As I said, about 80%, 70% are 35 and above.

But we are also launching a lifestyle section in malaysiakini. That will be in December. We're trying to target the younger generation. It'll be a little different from the lifestyle sections in traditional media. Perhaps it'll focus on certain areas that's not reported in mainstream media. Dina Zaman is the editor of our lifestyle section.

So subscribers are your main source of revenue?
Yes, 50%. The other sources will be advertising, very little. We have a technology arm which also, apart from selling software that we've developed, we help in terms of website and a few other solutions -- for instance subscription solutions, because we developed our own subscription system. We think that perhaps other NGOs or companies would want to move into subscription to collect membership fees, for instance. So, we're helping them, we're collecting a fee from it. All that, including the grant from SEAPA, makes up another 50%. So more or less, we're breaking even.

How many subscribers do you have?
We have about 5,000.

After you went on a subscription-based model, have you recovered the numbers you lost?
No, we haven't. We used to hit 120,000 readers a day. Now it is down to about 50,000. I think if anyone asks me if they should go into subscription model, I'd say no because we all know that there'll be a drop in readership and we expected that when we went into subscription model. We thought long and hard whether we should go on a subscription model. We decided that we really didn't have much of a choice; advertising alone cannot really help us.

I could give you stories [about] how certain advertisers were intimated by certain people and all that, but certainly there was some pressure being put on our advertising clients. Some of them are coming back but these are the small advertisers, they are not the big companies. Initially, there were big advertisers that advertised on malaysiakini. Not anymore. We knew we were not going to earn much money from advertising, so we decided we've really no choice, knowing that it'd slash our readership. We felt that perhaps, fair enough, we've a smaller readership, we may not have the kind of influence that we had before but we think it's better to survive with a small readership than not surviving at all.

Is there a future for online publishers like malaysiakini in Malaysia?
(Laughs, speaking hesitantly at first) It's a question that's been asked not just in Malaysia, but everywhere else. I don't see (pauses) ... though I believe there's a future but it's going to be a very, very tough future.

In Malaysia, I think it's even tougher for a number of reasons. One, just like everywhere else, people still haven't overcome the mindset that they have to pay for [online] content. And I think it'll take more time for them to come to that realisation that they will need to pay for content. The other thing is technology. I think Malaysia, unfortunately, is lagging behind in terms of broadband coverage compared to Taiwan or South Korea.

Interestingly, Malaysia was one of the first to talk about a multimedia super corridor in Asia and yet now, we're falling behind because other countries are already catching up and have overtaken us. If you look at South Korea, the Internet made a big impact when it comes to the presidential election. I think Taiwan also.

The third one is the political environment. Though, on one hand, it's great for malaysiakini [that] because of the lack of press freedom, people want to come to get at least an alternative viewpoint, I think the political environment is not conducive to big companies advertising in malaysiakini because they have this fear that somehow, they will be punished if they [do]. So, that's not encouraging for a website like malaysiakini to really survive. Because of these issues, I would say that it's a tough future. I think those issues can be resolved and they will be resolved. I still think the Internet has great promise for all of us. It may not be now, maybe in 10 years' time, but between now and then, malaysiakini will have to survive (chuckles) so that we can enjoy the fruits of our labour ... and that's our main consideration.

Who owns malaysiakini?
Malaysiakini is 29% owned by MDLF [Media Development Loan Fund], which is a Prague-based venture capitalist, and the other 70-odd per cent is owned by malaysiakini journalists and founders, including Prem and I.

What are your favourite websites, aside from malaysiakini?
Mostly news websites. It's not like I do it as a source of enjoyment or relaxation but more of the fact that I need to know exactly what's happening in the rest of the world. I have a number of websites that I normally surf like The New York Times, Washington Post, AFP, Reuters for the breaking news. I surf Google News because of its ability to categorise news and they do it automatically, being able to grab news from all around the world -- that helps me to see what other newspapers are reporting on but I'm still very much a print person.

Given the choice, I prefer to do a print rather than online operation because I think I'm still very much old school on that, because I think right now, the time is not conducive for online operations -- you'll need a whole new generation to be able to make it successful. For me, like everybody else, I find it very hard to read news online for too long, tiring to the eyes and all that. Until they can invent some new mechanism where the monitor looks exactly like a newspaper, then it'll be much better. And also, I prefer to read opinion pieces, lengthy explanations on certain events, analyses and it can be quite tiring [reading them online].

Do you have a life outside malaysiakini?
(In a slightly raised voice) Do I have a life outside malaysiakini? (Laughs) No, I don't. I'm married so I spend most of my [free] time with my wife (chuckles) ... but what do I do outside of malaysiakini? I watch movies a lot -- that's the only thing that I really enjoy. I can't find time to really relax unless I'm watching a movie. That's when I can really take my mind off work.

How long do you think you'll be doing this?
I wish that it'll be soon that I'll be able to move on. (Pauses) Sometimes, I wonder what really made me get involved in a media organisation that produces daily news and I think it's very difficult. The pressure can be really, really too much, especially when you have to produce news every day. At the end of the day, while you may have finished a particular job, the next day, you have to start all over again. In that sense, the job never gets done, you have to start over again every day. It's not like a weekly or a monthly, that'll be a little bit better. In a sense, I'll prefer to do a weekly but then again, with a website, you need to come up with a daily news kind of format because you need to make sure there's something interesting every day for people to come back. When it's a weekly, people tend to forget, or monthly, even worse. So in that sense, we don't really have a choice, we have to go daily but it's tough, really.
We work 12 hours daily and the pressure can be quite high in the sense that we want to make sure everything is above board, that there's no mistake.

How long do you see yourself doing this?
(Sighs) I don't want to think about it, really. Hopefully malaysiakini will come to a point when it's self-sustaining and we have good people to continue the operation, then perhaps, I can slowly withdraw from malaysiakini, but I think there's still some years to go before I can really do that.