Singapore's Straits Times was born from a bankrupt merchant's printing press
An Armenian merchant in Singapore ordered a printing press from England to start a newspaper, but his editor died before it arrived and he went bankrupt. A friend bought the equipment, hired an English journalist from Bombay, and on 15 July 1845 launched what became The Straits Times, now Singapore's newspaper of record.
That founding story is disputed. Historian Mary Turnbull doubted that an Armenian trader would want an English-language paper when the Singapore Free Press already existed. Either way, Catchick Moses and editor Robert Carr Woods started with an eight-page weekly on a hand-operated press, charging Sp.$1.75 a month. Woods tried to stand out with humour, short stories and foreign news carried by the new steamship mail services. The press lost money, and in 1846 Moses simply handed the paper to Woods.
What saved it was a feud. Woods loathed James Brooke, the Rajah of Sarawak, and accused him of massacring peaceful merchants under the pretext of fighting pirates. The Free Press defended Brooke, and the quarrel boosted both papers. A commission eventually cleared Brooke in 1854, but The Straits Times had found its audience and went daily in 1858. Under John Cameron in the 1860s a devastating fire nearly finished it; its assets fetched $40 at auction and he went bankrupt, yet he revived the paper.
Under Alexander W. Still, editor for 18 years, it earned the nickname Thunderer of the East after The Times of London, attacking corrupt businesses more fiercely than the colonial government and fighting off a string of libel suits. George Seabridge, editor from 1928, grew circulation from 5,000 to 25,000.
Its record was far from even-handed. Coverage centred on the British community and largely ignored the concerns of Malay, Chinese and Indian residents except for crime and court cases. Still himself called the Asian population untrustworthy, and Asian reporters faced discrimination at work. Today the paper, owned by SPH Media Trust and online since 1994, is the country's most widely circulated, and is generally seen as close to the governing People's Action Party.
Source: The Straits Times
