Malaysia Edition: Will Malay newspaper Utusan survive?

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In 1961, staff at Utusan Melayu launched a 90-day strike against a takeover by UMNO. In Malaysia’s nascent years, the ruling party was already seeking to force the media to serve its interests.

The strike was a historic moment for labour and press freedom. Nothing like it has been seen since. The UMNO-led coalition government continued to muzzle the media, with newspapers echoing party lines to their respective, largely race-based audiences.

Fast forward to 2026. Speculation that Utusan Malaysia – rebranded in 1967 after UMNO’s successful takeover – will close down has resurfaced. On Nov 1, the daily informed its 200 staff members that half of them would be placed on paid leave pending restructuring.

This development comes six years after the newspaper was revived following a nine-month shutdown. This was triggered by the watershed 2018 general election where UMNO lost power for the first time in history.

Decades of business-as-usual ended overnight for an entire slate of newspapers and broadcast outlets aligned with the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional coalition.

Yet the writing had long been on the wall, not just for Utusan Malaysia, but for much of the legacy media. Many outlets had operated in the red for years, requiring financial injections to stay afloat. They kept afloat primarily because political patrons found them useful.

While newsrooms struggled to balance their books, political communication transformed dramatically. Social media influencers and cybertroopers now exert significant influence, while political actors themselves can reach audiences directly.

Amid a cacophony of podcasts, social media clips and WhatsApp messages of varying veracity, voters have little headspace left for traditional news reporting.

Legacy media outlets are still the best source for original reporting, particularly on non-political beats like the economy or crime. Businessmen and criminals rarely broadcast their plans directly to the public on social media.

In fact, they are often the best source of political news too. It’s just that anyone can take someone else’s reporting and repurpose it to please the algorithm gods and reap most of the benefits.

My personal view is that news media will need a severe reckoning before people truly appreciate original journalism. Someone somewhere has to do the legwork, before influencers and social media platforms can profit from it.

Specific to the Malaysian experience is that these newspapers remain important symbols to their respective communities, championing their particular interests. Yet people largely no longer read them, let alone subscribe with their hard-earned ringgit.

Utusan has long been associated with Malay-Muslim nationalism, unsurprising given UMNO’s influence. In fact, many observers would say that some of its more extreme reporting and views have contributed to a self-inflicted decline.

Yet, for this same reason, no government wants to oversee the demise of Malaysia’s oldest Malay newspaper.

And definitely not Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition, which has long struggled to win over the Malay majority to its side. This will likely be the case again at the Melaka polls on Nov 14, after which PH has less than 15 months to convince Malays to cross over before a general election must be held.

Utusan’s publisher, Media Mulia, maintains that restructuring is necessary for business continuity. However, corporate sources told The Straits Times that the government is seeking potential buyers to rescue the newspaper.

Given the current business climate for news publishers, who would throw good money after bad? Any deal involving new stakeholders will surely come with caveats, implied or otherwise.

ST’s bureau in Kuala Lumpur will do our best to be a reliable resource on Malaysian news. Let us know if there is a pressing matter you would like us to add to our coverage, which you can sample below.