Veteran editor fears mainstream media journalists will grow ‘more complacent’ as CNA absorbs TODAY

SINGAPORE: Bertha Henson, formerly a senior editor with The Straits Times, weighed in on the merger of TODAY with CNA, which was announced on Aug 28.

In a Facebook post on Monday (Sept 2), Ms Henson wrote that the demise of TODAY did not come as a surprise, adding that the original rationale for the publication no longer holds.

She also touched on the beginnings of TODAY, of which she had a part and explained that the paper’s print version eventually became too expensive to maintain and became exclusively digital.

“Except that with the CNA Digital website, it now looked like MCS was duplicating resources,” Ms Henson wrote, adding that TODAY was also a forerunner of publications in Singapore that survived on ad revenues.

She went on to give credit to TODAY’s founding editor, PN Balji, who had also served as the editor of The New Paper and managed to pull TNP by its bootstraps.

Under his watch, TNP “pioneered explanatory graphics explaining government policies simply. It looked for magazine-like ways to draw in readers. It sharpened the hooks to get readers to stay with its reports on crime, sports, and entertainment.

Some people scream sensationalism, but, mind you, they still read it,” she wrote.

And while TODAY had its share of missteps, as organizations do, Ms Henson praised its reporting and angling, long-form reporting, and analyses of current events, as well as its pivot in appealing to younger audiences.

“I am of the view that TODAY would have surpassed ST in terms of readership if the financial mechanics had worked out. I had wondered if there was the option of retaining the masthead and subsuming CNA Digital under it.

But this is probably a non-starter given CNA’s longer history and toehold in Asia,” she added.

However, with TODAY’s absorption into CNA, “the MSM landscape will be even less diverse and less competitive now,” the veteran journalist opined, seeming to believe that the “energetic journalism” because of multiple news publications may now be in the past.

She expressed a concern that diminished competition will give rise to “even more complacency among journalists who now have fewer and fewer reasons to raise quality journalism.”

“My thanks to the TODAY newsroom for being the little guy who dared take on the big boys. You gave readers – and professional journalists – plenty of good years. May your long-form in your weekly edition live long and prosper,” she added. /TISG

Read also: Mediacorp: TODAY merges with CNA