Looks like she has been reading SBF and has comeback on why project eye failed plus others items mentioned in the SBF thread.
Here is the link to the background - http://www.singsupplies.com/showthread.php?230734-Challenge-of-Online-Political-Reporting-an-Insight
And her response below.
http://themiddleground.sg/2016/06/05/kopi-bertha-history-failure/Kopi with Bertha : My history with failure
Jun 05, 2016 11.00AM | Bertha Henson linkedin
by Bertha Henson
WHEN I was in Primary 4, I failed second language and history. My second language was Chinese (mother tongue hadn’t been invented as a phrase yet). As for history, my excuse is that the subject was taught in the second language. Yup. Those were the days when someone in the G got the idea to teach history in a language that would bind us to our “roots”. And I am only half-Chinese. What did the failure(s) teach me? To brush up on the language of course. More importantly, I think the G learnt something too: the idea only lasted a few years. Of course, it wasn’t because this one little girl failed. I believe many little girls and boys failed too.
I didn’t get an F in any subject after that failure. In fact, I was quite an ace student. So school-wise, I can say I was a success. I am thinking about failure because of what Acting Education Minister Ng Chee Meng had said about productive failures. You can read our story here.
It isn’t success that defines us. It’s failure. Success doesn’t teach us anything at all. In fact, it teaches us to be complacent and self-satisfied because things always go our way. We regard it as an entitlement and probably attribute the success less to the environment, family background or upbringing than we do to ourselves. We are successful because of who we are, we think. We do not say that others made us what we are.
Failure is a quick way to help you recognise your own shortcomings and to bring you up against reality. In my past life, I failed as an editor to make a newspaper my old company asked me to set up a growing concern. I let down my staff and had to conduct the first retrenchment exercise my old company ever had to go through. Of course, the first instinctive encounter with failure is to blame everybody else but yourself. So there was I thinking that the company had let me down with its untenable business model. It wasn’t the content that sucked, it was the marketing and distribution, I maintained.
But my failure was not recognising that the company didn’t have the stamina for an experimental newspaper which integrated print and online content. That was way back in 2000 with the introduction of Project Eyeball. And my failure was not to acknowledge that an editor has to handle the business aspects too. An editor has to be a publisher who wheels and deals with those icky advertisers and sponsors. Brought up on the idea of the separation of church (content) and state (business), I dreaded having to cajole and coax advertisers and sponsors who always wanted more than I could give without compromising editorial integrity.
What did that failure teach me?
The experience of setting up – and closing down – a newsroom is one of them. I wear this failure like a battle scar. It was injurious to me because I had to suffer the ignominy of being demoted and reporting to people who used to report to me. So the second lesson is: humility.
Accompanying this lesson in humility is this: You know who your friends are.
Failure is like a disease. People stay away from you to avoid being contaminated. That was what I thought at that time. Now I think it was more a question of embarrassment. People don’t know how to behave around people who failed. Do you commiserate with them? Would failed people want to be reminded of their failure? Should you behave as if nothing happened so as not to give “offence”?
Let me tell you how to behave around people who went through a big failure. Just ask this: “You okay?” That’s enough.
I swore to myself I would never start anything new again but the swearing didn’t work. When I was ordered to launch other projects, I knew enough about what to do. I swore (again!) never to let any staff go through a retrenchment exercise and diligently met and mingled with advertisers to drum up business. But I also knew enough to set up some parameters that would maintain editorial integrity while drawing in the moolah. It was tough bargaining but when you belong to a big newspaper like The Straits Times, you have more muscle on your side.
I knew better how to cut cost in many innovative ways and get the bean counters off my back. I also recognised the need to reward the best very well, and make do with the rest. There must be a core of staffers who are either extremely good in one thing, or can multi-task. These people are worth their weight in gold and others must aspire to join this elite team.
Failure also helped me in one respect. I can tell other people that I’ve been there done that and know exactly what can or cannot be done. People who succeed all the time can “boast” about what they did – but not what they didn’t do. But when I say something, people have to listen because I’m flashing my battle scar. I suppose you can call it reverse snobbery.
More recently, I set up – and closed down – another “newsroom”. That was Breakfast Network in 2013. Yes, the Media Development Authority’s demand that I register the website was the trigger. (So I am still blaming the MDA.) But the key reason is that the site and staff was not set up to cater to the demands of registration. There was but one shareholder, me, and a lot of people including undergraduates working without pay. There were no premises, no staff, nothing – just a bunch of people who thought that we should try to make our writing pay for itself. I have learnt that when you want to do anything, you set up the infrastructure first so that you’ll be ready for any surprises thrown your way.
So when The Middle Ground was set up, I handled only the editorial side of things and left it to the publisher to handle the infrastructure and the business. I declined to be given the title Editor but settled for Consulting Editor because being Editor sounds so much like obligatory full-time work!
You see, I have also learnt to take it easy in my, ah, middle age.
In fact, it is with age that you realise that success or failure shouldn’t just be about how you do in school or at work or business. It is with age that you ask yourself if you had failed in more important areas, such as your duties to your parents or your children. Or as a friend or boss – or even citizen. Those are the “results” that mark you as a person, not the career promotion or big contract. And failing or succeeding (hopefully succeeding) in these areas is what I would prefer to be measured against.
In this column, consulting editor Bertha Henson muses about life and living – and makan – through the scenes she witnesses in her neighbourhood.
Here is the link to the background - http://www.singsupplies.com/showthread.php?230734-Challenge-of-Online-Political-Reporting-an-Insight
And her response below.
http://themiddleground.sg/2016/06/05/kopi-bertha-history-failure/Kopi with Bertha : My history with failure
Jun 05, 2016 11.00AM | Bertha Henson linkedin
by Bertha Henson
WHEN I was in Primary 4, I failed second language and history. My second language was Chinese (mother tongue hadn’t been invented as a phrase yet). As for history, my excuse is that the subject was taught in the second language. Yup. Those were the days when someone in the G got the idea to teach history in a language that would bind us to our “roots”. And I am only half-Chinese. What did the failure(s) teach me? To brush up on the language of course. More importantly, I think the G learnt something too: the idea only lasted a few years. Of course, it wasn’t because this one little girl failed. I believe many little girls and boys failed too.
I didn’t get an F in any subject after that failure. In fact, I was quite an ace student. So school-wise, I can say I was a success. I am thinking about failure because of what Acting Education Minister Ng Chee Meng had said about productive failures. You can read our story here.
It isn’t success that defines us. It’s failure. Success doesn’t teach us anything at all. In fact, it teaches us to be complacent and self-satisfied because things always go our way. We regard it as an entitlement and probably attribute the success less to the environment, family background or upbringing than we do to ourselves. We are successful because of who we are, we think. We do not say that others made us what we are.
Failure is a quick way to help you recognise your own shortcomings and to bring you up against reality. In my past life, I failed as an editor to make a newspaper my old company asked me to set up a growing concern. I let down my staff and had to conduct the first retrenchment exercise my old company ever had to go through. Of course, the first instinctive encounter with failure is to blame everybody else but yourself. So there was I thinking that the company had let me down with its untenable business model. It wasn’t the content that sucked, it was the marketing and distribution, I maintained.
But my failure was not recognising that the company didn’t have the stamina for an experimental newspaper which integrated print and online content. That was way back in 2000 with the introduction of Project Eyeball. And my failure was not to acknowledge that an editor has to handle the business aspects too. An editor has to be a publisher who wheels and deals with those icky advertisers and sponsors. Brought up on the idea of the separation of church (content) and state (business), I dreaded having to cajole and coax advertisers and sponsors who always wanted more than I could give without compromising editorial integrity.
What did that failure teach me?
The experience of setting up – and closing down – a newsroom is one of them. I wear this failure like a battle scar. It was injurious to me because I had to suffer the ignominy of being demoted and reporting to people who used to report to me. So the second lesson is: humility.
Accompanying this lesson in humility is this: You know who your friends are.
Failure is like a disease. People stay away from you to avoid being contaminated. That was what I thought at that time. Now I think it was more a question of embarrassment. People don’t know how to behave around people who failed. Do you commiserate with them? Would failed people want to be reminded of their failure? Should you behave as if nothing happened so as not to give “offence”?
Let me tell you how to behave around people who went through a big failure. Just ask this: “You okay?” That’s enough.
I swore to myself I would never start anything new again but the swearing didn’t work. When I was ordered to launch other projects, I knew enough about what to do. I swore (again!) never to let any staff go through a retrenchment exercise and diligently met and mingled with advertisers to drum up business. But I also knew enough to set up some parameters that would maintain editorial integrity while drawing in the moolah. It was tough bargaining but when you belong to a big newspaper like The Straits Times, you have more muscle on your side.
I knew better how to cut cost in many innovative ways and get the bean counters off my back. I also recognised the need to reward the best very well, and make do with the rest. There must be a core of staffers who are either extremely good in one thing, or can multi-task. These people are worth their weight in gold and others must aspire to join this elite team.
Failure also helped me in one respect. I can tell other people that I’ve been there done that and know exactly what can or cannot be done. People who succeed all the time can “boast” about what they did – but not what they didn’t do. But when I say something, people have to listen because I’m flashing my battle scar. I suppose you can call it reverse snobbery.
More recently, I set up – and closed down – another “newsroom”. That was Breakfast Network in 2013. Yes, the Media Development Authority’s demand that I register the website was the trigger. (So I am still blaming the MDA.) But the key reason is that the site and staff was not set up to cater to the demands of registration. There was but one shareholder, me, and a lot of people including undergraduates working without pay. There were no premises, no staff, nothing – just a bunch of people who thought that we should try to make our writing pay for itself. I have learnt that when you want to do anything, you set up the infrastructure first so that you’ll be ready for any surprises thrown your way.
So when The Middle Ground was set up, I handled only the editorial side of things and left it to the publisher to handle the infrastructure and the business. I declined to be given the title Editor but settled for Consulting Editor because being Editor sounds so much like obligatory full-time work!
You see, I have also learnt to take it easy in my, ah, middle age.
In fact, it is with age that you realise that success or failure shouldn’t just be about how you do in school or at work or business. It is with age that you ask yourself if you had failed in more important areas, such as your duties to your parents or your children. Or as a friend or boss – or even citizen. Those are the “results” that mark you as a person, not the career promotion or big contract. And failing or succeeding (hopefully succeeding) in these areas is what I would prefer to be measured against.
In this column, consulting editor Bertha Henson muses about life and living – and makan – through the scenes she witnesses in her neighbourhood.
