Controversial socio-political website The Temasek Review (TR) will be shutting down sometime after July this year following several years of operation.
In an exclusive email interview with Yahoo! Singapore, editor Amanda Tan said that the editorial team of seven made the decision partly because of uncertainty over funding for the site, which is not for profit and runs on donations.
“TR’s popularity has exceeded all our expectations, and with increased readership demands for hardware rises (sic), and it would reach a level which the TR team can no longer comfortably afford,” she said.
TR now has 5,000 unique visitors per day with 100,000 page views.
“TR was never meant to ‘live’ forever. It was set up to help cultivate political awareness among fellow Singaporeans and we felt that we have achieved that,” said Tan.
“We have started the ball rolling and it is time we work on getting back our lives and spending more time with our family,” she said.
Since it started, the site has made waves online with its famous — or infamous — reports critical of Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party.
Last year, Singapore’s state investment company, Temasek Holdings, asked the website to change its name, claiming TR was trying to capitalise on the goodwill and reputation linked to the name “Temasek Review”.
Tan stressed that there was no “external influence” pressuring them to close the site, which has garnered a reputation for being stridently anti-government.
Claiming TR is “not against any institution or anyone in particular”, she said, “We really do not believe that the government is all out to shut us down because with their vast resources, they would already have done so if they had wanted to.”
Noting that the closure — which will take place after they resolve all matters to do with TR Debit Card orders — is “a question of when, not if”, Tan said, “The sale of our domain and donations did in a way help keep the site alive, but what about next year, the year after and so forth?”
Tan added, “It is indeed a difficult decision for our team of seven, but we realised that inevitably it is a path we have to take, and (we have to) learn to move on.”
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/sing...1zZwRwc3RhaWQDBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25zBHRlc3QD;_ylv=3
In an exclusive email interview with Yahoo! Singapore, editor Amanda Tan said that the editorial team of seven made the decision partly because of uncertainty over funding for the site, which is not for profit and runs on donations.
“TR’s popularity has exceeded all our expectations, and with increased readership demands for hardware rises (sic), and it would reach a level which the TR team can no longer comfortably afford,” she said.
TR now has 5,000 unique visitors per day with 100,000 page views.
“TR was never meant to ‘live’ forever. It was set up to help cultivate political awareness among fellow Singaporeans and we felt that we have achieved that,” said Tan.
“We have started the ball rolling and it is time we work on getting back our lives and spending more time with our family,” she said.
Since it started, the site has made waves online with its famous — or infamous — reports critical of Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party.
Last year, Singapore’s state investment company, Temasek Holdings, asked the website to change its name, claiming TR was trying to capitalise on the goodwill and reputation linked to the name “Temasek Review”.
Tan stressed that there was no “external influence” pressuring them to close the site, which has garnered a reputation for being stridently anti-government.
Claiming TR is “not against any institution or anyone in particular”, she said, “We really do not believe that the government is all out to shut us down because with their vast resources, they would already have done so if they had wanted to.”
Noting that the closure — which will take place after they resolve all matters to do with TR Debit Card orders — is “a question of when, not if”, Tan said, “The sale of our domain and donations did in a way help keep the site alive, but what about next year, the year after and so forth?”
Tan added, “It is indeed a difficult decision for our team of seven, but we realised that inevitably it is a path we have to take, and (we have to) learn to move on.”
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/sing...1zZwRwc3RhaWQDBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25zBHRlc3QD;_ylv=3
