LOL… http://www.vtunnel.com is blocked in *my* company but luckily your site is not…I think the websense (more like web nonsense) thinks yours is a news site.

I feel far too many media agencies, particularly in the West, will bow to readership (economic) considerations at the expense of providing an objective analysis of what is going on in society and the world.

I believe a lot of Western style jounalism creates division, mistrust and emnity between peoples in situations where more balanced, even-handed analysis of current events would lead to greater understanding and mutual respect between people.

I sincerely hope you able to achieve this more objective, balanced journalism that you are aiming for.

Good luck.

You can try accessing our site through this proxy:

http://www.vtunnel.com

The only bad thing is: your site is blocked at my workplace. A lot of sites were blocked eg. horoscopes = Folklore category, jokes = Tasteless category, comics = Sex category, anime list sites = Peer 2 Peer category. I think your site is under the ‘Political Organizations/Advocacy’ category.

No conspiracy, just a control freak network admin.

So you are saying a site is less credible if it is critical? I am probably not “conventional” because I find it difficult to understand and agree with this statement. How can a site be more credible if it refrain from being critical even when criticism is called for? A site should be more credible if it give praise where praise is due, and give criticism where criticism is due. Not by being one sided and refrain from being critical and trying to look “objective”, whatever that is.

I moved away from State times, Channel News Asia and come over here because I feel that down here is more credible and objective because there is some element of being critical rather than one sided.

So my view is that increasing the content of business, economics and other areas is well and fine, but do not intentionally and one sidedly suppress or reduce the political and critical content.

For what it’s worth, it seems that the winning formula has a lot to do with not pulling any punches, staying with the facts and calling things the way you see them. Leave “fair and balanced” to the infamous Fox News, which in its own way has been no less of a mouthpiece for the incumbent interests than our #152-ranked state times.

For sure, it’s tough being the lightning rod in a sea of officially-sanctioned mediocrity. But if you were to steer your content into the mainstream, the whole point would be lost. It would be like U2 going from an edgy rock band to… er… sellout kings.

As the inimitable Gordon Sumner (aka Sting) said… “I could destroy myself to be the perfect man / She might prefer me as I am”.

Just make sure that the TR ’says it like it is’ and not fall into the trap of pandering to its readership, for now comments on political articles seem largely against the incumbent, what if that changes?

As long as you give equal airtime and fair treatment for news relating to both govt and opposition – positive or negative, viewers will appreciate it.

Let the comments fall where they may, as long as you keep the censorship sensible (racism, vulgarities) and let the opinions flow, no one can fault you for floating an imagined bias.

It is pretty clear that singaporeans want an outlet to vent their political opinions, why shy away from that – embrace it instead, as long as the TR is fair you’ll do fine.

For all you know maybe one day singaporeans will be here complaining about how parliament is girdlocked or how the whatchamacallit party is screwing things up and how we should bring PAP v2020 back

“silenceisgolden” makes a very apt analogy. Your worry is you wonder what kind of audience you are attracting. A more pertinent question is : is your readership growing.

If your readership is growing, then what is the worry? You can doing the right thing (although from a business perspective, you should know why it is growing)

If your readership stagnant or tapering off, then you are right to worry and need to starts getting more readership.

Using “silenceisgolden”’s analogy, you may sell only fish and egg now but eventually, you may want to sell beef and poultry to capture your market share as well.

So currently, the range of topic breakdown is as follows.

1.) Criticism and negative news of government policy (you have these)
2.) Positive news and exposure to opposition (you need to expand to have these to capture more readers)
3.) Positive news and exposure of government and PAP (MSMs have these galore, you have to compete with them on this)
4.) Criticism and negative news of opposition (sometimes you have these and MSMs is expert at this)
5.) Technical topics e.g. economic articles (you will have to compete with not just MSMs but many credible and established news sites dedicated to those)
6.) Lifestyle news (Lots of competition)
7.) Gossips (you should not go there although it is another crowd puller. Again lots of competition)

I guessed you better have an internal meeting among the top executives and decide which direction to go.

Speaking for myself, the reason I come here is because I get to read things I don’t get to read anywhere (i.e. item 1), able to make comments in anonymity and share sentiments with fellow “grousers”. And so far this site has been pretty lively but without the “low-class” feeling of other “grousing” sites. I think this is attributed to the many excellent postings by users here from both sides of the fences.