The Malaysian Insight

UTUSAN Malaysia must broaden its appeal beyond its traditional readership of Umno supporters and widen its revenue stream if the paper is to rise again, said media experts.

To do this, it must become editorially independent of its former political master, Umno, and shed the subsidy mentality which the party encouraged. 

As Umno tightened its grip on Utusan, the paper’s bosses became more complacent and dependent on the party’s patronage to pay the bills.

Throughout Umno’s reign in the federal government, Utusan could count on the fact that it would always have a permanent “customer”, said Megat Al Imran Yasin of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM).

“All government departments, agencies and national schools were required to subscribe to Utusan, so it always had a ready customer base,” said Megat, who lectures at UPM’s Department of Communications.

This dependence fostered a subsidy mentality among the paper’s management and stopped the company from innovating and finding new sources of revenue in the age of digital media, he said.

“This made it rely solely on revenue from subscriptions and advertising. But while it was doing this, advertising revenue had steadily moved online and Utusan was too slow to capture it.”

This is unlike its competitors Sinar Harian and Berita Harian, which did not rely on government patronage but instead expanded aggressively their presence in new media.

“While Utusan’s top editors thought that Umno would always be in the government, its competitors looked for new sources of income and didn’t rely on their print operations,” said Megat.

The 80-year-old newspaper’s fortunes snagged the headlines throughout the week when news broke that the paper could cease operations yesterday.

Utusan has been in financial difficulties since last year and has failed to meet salary payments from June this year.

It is also having difficulty paying 800 staff members who left under a voluntary separation scheme – a move that the management believed would help the company stay afloat.

After news broke that the company could be ceasing operations, it was later revealed that Umno had injected about RM1.6 million to pay a portion of salaries.

Late on Tuesday, the management said the paper will continue publishing but that it will increase the cover price of Utusan Malaysia and sister publication Kosmo by 50 sen starting tomorrow.

Go beyond Umno

Utusan’s dire situation is tied to Umno’s takeover of the paper in 1960, said Prof Zaharom Nain of Nottingham University, Malaysia.

“Like it or not, political ownership – of any colour – affects readers’ perceptions. And, in Utusan’s case, certainly after the 1960 strike and Umno takeover, its editorial stance had been skewed Umno’s way,” said Zaharom.

But as support for Umno declined, especially after the 2008 general election, its readership outside of government offices also fell, said Megat.

“There was a time when Mingguan Malaysia (Utusan’s weekend edition) was the highest-selling national paper. But after the last general election, its circulation is now a fraction of that.”

At its height in 1994, Utusan’s daily paper sold 350,000 copies. This dropped to 250,000 in 2004. 

In the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s (ABC) survey, the daily recorded sales of 144,438 copies in the first half of 2016.

In the second half of 2018, ABC reported that Utusan’s daily circulation had fallen to an average of 97,393 copies. Mingguan Malaysia’s circulation dropped to 199,154 but it was still the highest among weekend Malay newspapers. 

Due to its ties to Umno and dependence on government subscriptions, Utusan’s management ignored the worldwide trend of declining revenue from newspapers, said Zaharom.

“Newspapers evidently can’t sell, because the internet has brought us 24-hour news. 

“The new technology has made traditional, capital-intensive ways of running newspapers quite difficult, if not impossible. Advertisers have also gone digital.

“So, newspapers like Utusan and others lost out on both circulation and advertising revenue,” he said.

To revive the paper, it has to maintain a fierce journalistic independence from its political masters, Zaharom said.

Megat said Utusan needs to do both – to be editorially independent but also to cut off its financial ties to Umno.

English-language daily The Star, for instance, is owned by Umno’s political partner MCA, which has even lower support among the populace.

“But you don’t see The Star suffering like Utusan. The Chinese English-speaking community has not totally abandoned the paper like they abandoned MCA,” Megat said.

The difference between Utusan and The Star’s experiences is that while the former hitched its commercial future on its political master, the latter did not.

The Star went out to expand its audience and invested heavily in digital media to get advertising revenue that was quickly moving from print to online, said Megat.

“To be viable, Utusan cannot just rely on its traditional audience and revenue streams. It must expand its audience and the medium of its distribution.” – August 22, 2019.