Malysiakini, Malaysia

The news website Malaysiakini.com (Malaysia Now) was launched in 1999 by two dedicated journalists seeking to provide an alternative to the pro-establishment media monopoly.

Then, as now, the government tightly restricted newspapers, TV and radio resulting in self-censorship and very little dissent. Malaysiakini took advantage of laws that protect free speech online and used it to provide a whole new world of objective news and opinion. As the sole independent news source in the country, Malaysiakini's readership reached 100,000 visitors a day within eight months of its launch.

When the dotcom bubble burst, however, the website suffered a sharp drop in online advertising revenue and was forced to reassess its business model. With the help of a loan and strategic advice from MDLF, in 2003 it switched to a subscription-based model which kept a selection of the most important articles freely accessible but hid others behind a pay-wall.

While readership did initially drop as expected, there was an immediate increase in revenue and this has grown strongly over time, enabling Malaysiakini not only to survive the dotcom bubble, but actually thrive in a medium that allows it to maintain its editorial independence.

But the real driver for business is that Malaysiakini has made itself indispensable to the Malaysian people. The company did this most effectively in 2008 when it temporarily brought down the subscription wall in the lead-up to the March general election. As a contribution to the democratic process, Malaysiakini provided reliable non-partisan information about all candidates free of charge - information that was unavailable anywhere else. As a result, once the subscription wall was reinstated a few weeks later, subscriber numbers nearly doubled.

Although there has been a change of government, the website continues to face intimidation by the authorities. But each time it does, it makes Malaysiakini more committed to providing Malaysians with objective news and opinions that can be found nowhere else.

Leave a comment:

Name or email:

Subject:

Text:

Code from the picture above: