I just came back from hearing a proposal to start a campus newspaper, and the name of the newspaper is “LaVoz”.

I did not make the name up. In fact, I don’t think I will ever think of such a name for a newspaper that purports independent news reporting and first class journalism. I don’t know what kind of publication would the name “LaVoz” be suitable for. A Spanish version of FHM?

I was so glad that someone raised a very important question. The person was thoroughly confused as to how can the paper be independent in news coverage and reporting when funding is being sought from NUS. Those guys tried to explain it away saying it’s temporary, and that they will go independent after breaking even.

Yeah, even if it’s temporary, that means that your content will be constrained until you go independent. Period. So much for independent news reporting. It is a fact of life that if I am having you only my payroll, you jolly well do what I say or else you are out. Seems to me that those people don’t even understand this basic point. I don’t know what world they are living in, but I’m quite sure it’s not the Earth.

Looking at their business plan, they aim to break even after 10 issues. Wow. A free newspaper printing bi-weekly with a target circulation of more than 20,000 copies per issue is aiming to break even after ten issues. Let me see, Streats and Today had a few hundred thousand copies circulating daily, and they bled right to the end, until SPH and Mediacorp decided that it’s stupid to bleed red ink and merged the two papers. Looks like they need to read newspapers to get themselves updated with news before they start thinking about publishing an actual newspaper.

Looking at what they called “a close approximation” of their actual product, I wonder who would read it. I’ve never seen a newspaper the size of the New Paper having 5-6 narrow columns of text. Each column is about the width of your index and middle finger put together. Would you read such a paper? Not to mention, pages 1-4 has serif font size 11, pages 5 – 7 has serif font size 10 and then pages 8-10 has sans serif fonts. According to someone from the audience, there were free copies of the Financial Times being circulated and the canteen aunties took some of it to wrap fish. I’m betting to my last dollar that the canteen aunties can have unlimited supply of LaVoz to wrap their fish because no one will bother to read such an appallingly designed newspaper.

Well, I suppose all the grouses that I have up to now would be acceptable if the content is good, but unfortunately, content is the horror of horrors. No news sense, writing like they are writing academic papers or worse, compositions. I have no idea how their professor could say that the content is good. As much as I dislike the New Paper for its contents, I have to say that in comparison, the New Paper is 1000000000000000 times better.

My conclusion? It’s just like how I concluded my previous post. Thrash will always be thrash. Period.