News outlet Today to merge with CNA, will become digital weekend magazine from October

SINGAPORE – Online publication Today, first launched as a free newspaper in 2000, will be merged with CNA come Oct 1, becoming a long-form weekend magazine.

The move was announced on Aug 28, with Mediacorp, the publisher of Today, saying in a statement: “This merger will allow the best of Today – its high-quality original journalism – to be served via CNA’s digital platform to the significantly larger CNA audience both in Singapore and overseas.”  

In a note seen by The Straits Times, Mediacorp editor-in-chief Walter Fernandez said all staff will be offered roles in CNA, either as part of the team working on the new weekend digital magazine or strengthening other teams, which best fit their skill sets.

“This move... will also help to grow CNA’s already significant digital traffic and further deepen its engagement, particularly on weekends,” Mr Fernandez said.

In a separate note, Mediacorp chief executive officer Tham Loke Kheng said the merger will not result in any staff cuts.

Rumours of an announcement about the changes spread on the afternoon of Aug 28, with Today staff, some recalled from leave, asked to attend a meeting in the office.

In his note, Mr Fernandez said different options were explored in the past year before the merger was decided on.

He attributed the eventual decision to the worldwide increase in news fatigue and active news avoidance, which he said have been exacerbated by changes to the algorithms of certain social media platforms to de-emphasise news and reduce its discoverability.

He also said there was a significant increase in the overlap between the audiences of Today and CNA.

Today started out as a free morning tabloid in November 2000, as part of moves to liberalise the local media scene. The paper was distributed at MRT stations and bus interchanges, and tailored for busy commuters to get their morning news fix on the go.

It was part of a joint venture between the Media Corporation of Singapore, SMRT and SingTel Yellow Pages, and was launched shortly after Singapore Press Holdings, now SPH Media, launched the Streats free newspaper.

In 2004, Streats was merged with Today, with SPH taking a 40 per cent stake in Today’s publisher, Mediacorp Press. This stake was divested in 2017.

Today went fully digital in October 2017, with about 40 staff made redundant at the time.

In her note, Ms Tham thanked the Today team for their “hard work, commitment, and constant innovation over the years”.

Mr Fernandez said he was excited about this next phase of the publication’s evolution.

Journalists and editors who used to work at Today said they had seen the writing on the wall.

Mr P. N. Balji, the founding editor-in-chief of Today, told ST that the closure of a news outlet should be seen as a dark day for society.

He added that Today’s absorption into CNA was inevitable given the state of digital media and its inability to fund itself well.

“Going digital is not easy as the might of Google and Facebook have entrenched themselves in the media world. One way to get round this is to find people who believe in media and its role in society to underwrite the finances,” he said.

Ms Janice Lim, 36, a Business Times journalist who worked at Today between 2018 and 2022, said it was sad to see that the news outlet could not withstand the tide of commercial forces.

“Today will always be the outlet that honed my reporting skills, in terms of the questions to ask, the angles to explore,” she said. “It was a trial by fire, where reporters get asked to keep going back to newsmakers to ask questions again and again, and where I trained to be more thick-skinned with my approach. It still shapes who I am as a reporter today.”

Pointing out that Today has always sought to push “the headline a bit further”, she said its presence has been enriching for Singaporeans on both the media literacy and knowledge fronts.

But Ms Lim said she is optimistic about the future of the Big Read, which focuses on in-depth, long-form pieces.

“As long as, editorially, things remain the same... and the scope and purpose of the Big Read remain the same – which is to dive deeper into current issues that got Singaporeans talking, rather than treating them as done-and-dusted news – then I don’t think it’s much of an issue,” she said.