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http://72.5.72.93/html/article.php?sid=514
Eyeball Closes
Posted on Monday, July 02, 2001
Topic: Local News[/TD]
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by Pak Cham Kai and Bettina Hensome
Project Eyeball, Singapore Press Holdings' paper/website aimed at net-savvy young Singaporeans closed shop last week to few tears from readers' eyeballs.
The shutting down came as no surprise to most Singaporeans, especially after an independent media survey conducted earlier this year showed that the paper/website had attracted an audience of exactly one eyeball - belonging to Chia Sior Eng, 18, a full-time National Serviceman. (
see archived story)
However, even this audience evaporated when Mr. Chia, whose other eyeball is focused on porn sites, decided to devote both eyeballs to
www.sammyboy.com instead.
"Sorry, lah," said Mr. Chia. "But being in the army has caused me to focus on coverage that is more relevant to my life."
Eyeball's editor in chief gave a stiff-upper lip editorial to mark the end of her reign.
However, TalkingCock.com managed to unearth the following early draft of the editorial from the rubbish bins outside SPH.
YOU BASTARDS!
Final Editorial - Version 1.21, Publication date: 27 June 2001
(DO NOT RELEASE before approval from you-know-who)
By Chief Editor I-was-arrowed-and-it's-not-my-fault
This is the story of a newsroom which tried and tried, and wound up very trying.
We tried to put up a newspaper that was different, but provided it met the same guidelines as the rest.
We wanted it to speak for the young - mainly the kind of young in Young PAP.
However, we found the young would rather be reading sammyboy.com or TalkingCock.com instead. Illiterate, degenerate, ungrateful bastards!
We thought that having a photographer who was convicted of statutory rape would improve our street cred, but it was too little, too late. (Which is kind of like our photographer's situation - she was too little, but it was too late for him.)
Yes, we screwed up from Day 1. We made the mistake of trying to be a dotcom, but it was at a time when it was okay not to make money. And we thought we had resources that other dotcoms didn't - like getting our holding company to make it compulsory reading for secondary school students.
And we made the mistake of looking too much like a technology/Internet only newspaper. But a technology/internet publication whose only interactive features were bulletin boards and quicktime videos of people making sandwiches. Real cutting edge.
And how were we to compete against two free newspapers in a country where there are more newspapers than there is news?
But still, we tried. Almost everybody here is in their 20s, and they went into this job with outstanding vigour. Today, they are a hardened lot who had the courage and stamina to carry on even when friends were telling them that their job was pointless and just another government idea to make it seem like there was real freedom of choice or expression. But we believe these qualities showed that they had what it takes to make it in Singapore.
There were some articles we were particularly proud of, none of which you bastards are likely to remember, but we're proud of them anyway.
And over the past 10 months, we had fun. Fun poking fun at Singapore's strait-laced ways as long as it was government-approved. Fun trying to see if we could scoop other newspapers despite our small size. (Answer: not enough times to count.) Fun coming out with the flashiest website with the full multimedia works, and the most elegant looking newspaper in Singapore. Yes, we're arrogant enough to say so. Pity you tasteless philistines didn't agree!
But probably the greatest fun was getting reactions from readers who thought we had attitude and were willing to share their views with us. In the spirit of exchange, we're also sharing their names with the Internal Security Department, from whose alumni we also share a good number of staff-members.
That's because we believed that Singapore is ready for discussion - discussion of issues that might be considered taboo, like asking the PAP to campaign on the issue of foreign talent, because, really, people aren't too happy with it. (Though how taboo was our coverage when we're taking the PAP's position?)
But at the end of day, money talks and we didn't bring in the moolah. (Though one wonders if we would have done better if we used more Singapore slang instead of Angmorified jargon like 'moolah'? But hey, we want to improve Singapore's English, and western colloquialisms are okay but not local ones.)
Anyway, that's the way the world works. But don't worry about us. We'll just be absorbed back into SPH's other newspapers, where we will finally get a bit more respect.
By the way, if this is your first time reading this newspaper, fuck you! Where were you bastards before?
Goodbye.
Bastards! Bastards! Bastards![/TD]
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