OB Markers: My Straits Times Story

OB Markers: My Straits Times Story is a book of former Straits Times editor, Cheong Yip Seng's memoirs.

It is much more than just a "deep-background-off-the-record" of Lee Kuan Yew's years as Singapore's number one newsmaker. It is a chronological and sensitive explanation of how the republic's newspaper of record was shaped by Lee - and, more importantly, why he took it upon himself to do so. These memoirs could not have come at a more appropriate time, when Singapore's third generation leaders were finding themselves in the headwinds of public opinion the first Prime Minister dealt with with a firm hand. Whether times had changed and Singapore's current leadership could no longer deal with The Straits Times the way Lee dealt with Cheong and his predecessors was a question this book threw up. The answer was a subject worthy of debate among the myriad self-appointed and untrained citizen journalists, who should read this book for their own much-needed enlightenment.

It was also for anyone interested in the future of Singapore, for its accounts of what constituted "out of bounds" up until 2006 showed how such areas could possibly be navigated now. As Cheong's memoirs of The Straits Times for more than four decades revealed, the rationale for the Singapore media model might be hard to accept for many liberals. But this model had been sufficiently successful to keep Singapore's newspaper of record one of the most successful in the world.

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