Newspaper closure reflects downturn

By Amit Baruah

SINGAPORE, JUNE 29. It was a ``good-bye'' edition from the editor and staff of Project Eyeball, an integrated print and cyberspace newspaper launched by Singapore Press Holdings last August.

``Singapore Press Holdings (which owns the Straits Times newspaper) wishes to announce that it has suspended publication of Project Eyeball tomorrow and the last issue is today, June 28, 2001,'' the front page of Project Eyeball read on Thursday.

The announcement said that market conditions had become ``severe'' and cyberspace was not as commercially viable as ``originally thought''.

A report in the Straits Times said on Thursday that the project had lost Singapore $13.3 millions since it began publication and had not been able to achieve the circulation or advertising revenue expected.

The newspaper report said that 46 staffers of the project would be redeployed in other Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) publications while 19 others were expected to be retrenched.

(According to one estimate, with the slowdown in the Singapore economy, as many as 3,000 persons have lost their jobs in the island State in the first three months of the year. The figure, it is feared, may hit 12,000 by the end of the year.)

In her good-bye editorial, the project's editor, Ms. Bertha Hanson, said: ``This is the story of a newsroom which tried. We tried to put up a newspaper which was different....yes, we started stumbling from Day 1. We made the mistake of hitching ourselves to the dotcom bandwagon....''

``Of course, there were business decisions that, on hindsight, seemed pretty far out - in a market which also saw the launch of two free sheets, the 80-cent cover price was too high,'' Ms. Hansen argued.

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Section  : International
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