Latest News Update About New Temasek Review: New Temasek ReviewBack in the days when Temasek Review was Wayang Party, the original editorial team would never imagine that it would make it this far. It was then a "wayang" blog the likes of SammyBoy CoffeeShop on Delphi, etc. not to be taken seriously as far as contents and articles are concerned. The editors then were all Singaporeans based in Singapore though some are subsequently based overseas, thus the lack of "courage" to write as it should and as it is.
When this management took over and bought the domains from its previous owners in 2009, we decided that it would never go far and truely live up to its promises of being an independent, balanced and unbiased internet newspaper offering coverage on socio-political affairs in Singapore if we were to allow ourselves to be restricted by local norms and repressive laws.
We wanted Temasek Review to truely be an independent Singapore news site, providing space for columnists and reader comments from across the political spectrum to foster, facilitate and promote serious debate and discourse which is sorely lacking in Singapore.
As such, all editors based in Singapore were "removed" to protect their own interests and we engaged volunteer editors from all around the world who are Singaporeans but without the restrictions imposed on Singapore based editors socially and legally. We kept all correspondents who wanted to remain with us and welcome contributions from our readers.
With the removal of the fear factor and restrictions imposed on our editors, we were able to produce more unbiased articles, report the ugly? truth, publish uncensored letters from readers and try our best to put the freedom of speech in practice and pushing it as far as possible, within acceptable legal and social boundaries.
Fortunately with this approach and within a short span of? 1 year, Temasek Review is today the most read alternative news and socio-political blog ranked 179th? in Singapore, compared to Business Times (181st) and Today Online (196). Its articles are taken more seriously by readers and often quoted by fellow journalists from around the world, example: BBC, CNN, ABC and AFP.
We have received numerous requests for interviews by foreign correspondents who want to know the real political situation in Singapore which they are unable to obtain from the mainstream media which is ranked 133rd in terms of press freedom by respected International NGO Reporters without Borders in 2009.
However, the facts remains that it is still run by a group of 7 volunteer editors (moderators excluded) and financed by advertising revenues and donations from its readers. As such, due to manpower constraints, we are unable to vet through and publish every contributed articles from our correspondents and readers, thus restricting the number of articles published per day. Most good articles and contributions had to be discarded when the time lapses making it no longer newsworthy.
Coupled above with the fact that Singaporeans are now better informed and well educated, we have decided to "pass the baton' back to our readers and encourage those interested to be our "Citizen Journalist" on our relaunch website, wayangparty.com aka New Wayang Party.
The New Wayang Party will be a forum allowing contributions from registered users with various categories for related posts. It will be helmed by an existing editor from Temasek Review and moderated by volunteer readers.
In a nutshell, it will be a Singapore forum moderated by readers, contributed by readers for readers.? Every aspect of the new forum will be managed by readers (moderator) and articles will be by readers. Temasek Review was setup for Singaporeans and the time is ripe for concerned Singaporeans to be a part of their own future.
Such an arrangement we hope will lighten the load for editors manning Temasek Review while allowing more space and avenue for for readers to contribute to the alternative news sphere via the forum in realtime.
While the New Wayang Party is being setup by our in-house tech, we would like to invite interested readers who would like to act as moderator in our new forum to kindly contact us (editor) with your Nick (you must be a registered user on Temasek Review to be considered) via our online webform.
Additionally, we would appreciate any feedback from our readers as to the categories and suggestions you may have to our planned relaunch. p
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