Endpiece
By Rex de Silva, Editor in Chief, Borneo Bulletin It's ten minutes to midnight on Nov. 24, 2007 in the rainforest kingdom of Brunei and the Borneo Bulletin is off stone. Having passed the pages to the printer, the night editor has called it a day. It's all systems go to press time. Being the Thanksgiving weekend in the US, where I live, I am on a tour traversing the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. Before reaching my destination I decide to check on the pre-press pages on my laptop. It is fifty minutes past 10a.m. I spot libelous references in the lead story. Time to troubleshoot remotely, as I often do. But the irregular Smokies terrain gets the better of my link. The wi-fi connection drops dead. I promptly reach for the iPhone, my new backup gizmo, to get on the web. And with a few touch screen strokes I clean up the libel and the paper is good to go. What took place here was editing in virtual reality. It's a simple digital technology called VPN (Virtual Private Networking) that is common today. I simply need not take all the trouble to edit via such remote controls. But when my amiable publisher, the Brunei Press company, refuses to hear me say the words 'time to retire' after 18 long years, and while my family, who moved to New Jersey from Sri Lanka 20 years ago, demands quality time that I may have unwittingly deprived them for almost four decades - living most of the time in newsrooms away from home - we had to improvise. It was my IT-savvy son Dilan who first hinted at the possibility of using the digital way to overcome the constraints of time and distance. Now I can run the newspaper remotely from New Jersey using a VPN, accessible on the Internet with remarkable success. And one need not be a high-tech cognoscente to do that. The time difference between Brunei and USA suits me just fine for editing and managing content, engaging in critical decision making with key staff and even video conferencing. I'm not permanently at a great distance from the newsroom, however; I still visit and spend between three and four months of the year in Brunei. In hindsight, I guess the setting up of the paper literally from scratch was helpful in tailoring its fundamental structure and strategy. Things have changed dramatically for the better at the Borneo Bulletin during the past 18 years when it was first published as a daily newspaper after a run of 37 years as a weekly. I recall with nostalgia the day I came to Brunei amidst a perfect monsoonal storm on July 1, 1990. But a much bigger storm awaited me when I stepped into the editorial offices. Its erstwhile core editorial staff had made a hasty retreat, leaving just one local reporter and a rookie subeditor, when its new publishers wanted the paper to be turned into a daily. And they wanted it yesterday! It seemed rather a Herculean task and indeed, it turned out to be quite a challenging assignment. For me, it was a case of déjà vu; rather reminiscent of Sri Lanka 1977 when I took over as editor of the Sun, a fiercely independent newspaper after it reopened its offices following a four-year ban imposed by a repressive regime. Just a handful of old hands remained to run that paper as the bulk of former staff had found employment elsewhere. Resorting to 'where there's a will there's a way' formula, the Sun was given a polish and rose from the ashes to be one of the most popular and influential newspapers in Sri Lanka. It became the training ground for hundreds of new journalists; the cream of that crop are now the leading editors there today. Likewise, we enlisted a half a dozen locals in a boot camp of intensive training and succeeded in bringing out Brunei's first daily newspaper in just two months. Today the Borneo Bulletin sells 30,000 copies daily, seven days of the week with a readership around 125,000. With a population of less than 400,000, that doesn't sound bad at all. One bugbear we still face however is finding new staff, especially in the absence of proper training facilities. To overcome this we have tried - with relative success - attracting young hopefuls through two distinctive programmes. Six years ago we introduced a weekly High School Sunday segment that lets college students work as reporters and subeditors in our newsroom while having their work published. We also provide part-time employment to undergraduates as proofreaders and interns in our newsroom. Following graduation most of them choose to become journalists. At a time when newspapers face many challenges, it is imperative to redefine our priorities and retool to keep pace with the ever-changing scenario. Now, whenever I drive between New Jersey and Philadelphia, across the great bridge named after Benjamin Franklin, the famous philosopher, writer, publisher and inventor, his words resonate with deep meaning: "When you are finished changing, you are finished."
By Rex de Silva, Editor in Chief, Borneo Bulletin It's ten minutes to midnight on Nov. 24, 2007 in the rainforest kingdom of Brunei and the Borneo Bulletin is off stone. Having passed the pages to the printer, the night editor has called it a day. It's all systems go to press time. Being the Thanksgiving weekend in the US, where I live, I am on a tour traversing the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. Before reaching my destination I decide to check on the pre-press pages on my laptop. It is fifty minutes past 10a.m. I spot libelous references in the lead story. Time to troubleshoot remotely, as I often do. But the irregular Smokies terrain gets the better of my link. The wi-fi connection drops dead. I promptly reach for the iPhone, my new backup gizmo, to get on the web. And with a few touch screen strokes I clean up the libel and the paper is good to go. What took place here was editing in virtual reality. It's a simple digital technology called VPN (Virtual Private Networking) that is common today. I simply need not take all the trouble to edit via such remote controls. But when my amiable publisher, the Brunei Press company, refuses to hear me say the words 'time to retire' after 18 long years, and while my family, who moved to New Jersey from Sri Lanka 20 years ago, demands quality time that I may have unwittingly deprived them for almost four decades - living most of the time in newsrooms away from home - we had to improvise. It was my IT-savvy son Dilan who first hinted at the possibility of using the digital way to overcome the constraints of time and distance. Now I can run the newspaper remotely from New Jersey using a VPN, accessible on the Internet with remarkable success. And one need not be a high-tech cognoscente to do that. The time difference between Brunei and USA suits me just fine for editing and managing content, engaging in critical decision making with key staff and even video conferencing. I'm not permanently at a great distance from the newsroom, however; I still visit and spend between three and four months of the year in Brunei. In hindsight, I guess the setting up of the paper literally from scratch was helpful in tailoring its fundamental structure and strategy. Things have changed dramatically for the better at the Borneo Bulletin during the past 18 years when it was first published as a daily newspaper after a run of 37 years as a weekly. I recall with nostalgia the day I came to Brunei amidst a perfect monsoonal storm on July 1, 1990. But a much bigger storm awaited me when I stepped into the editorial offices. Its erstwhile core editorial staff had made a hasty retreat, leaving just one local reporter and a rookie subeditor, when its new publishers wanted the paper to be turned into a daily. And they wanted it yesterday! It seemed rather a Herculean task and indeed, it turned out to be quite a challenging assignment. For me, it was a case of déjà vu; rather reminiscent of Sri Lanka 1977 when I took over as editor of the Sun, a fiercely independent newspaper after it reopened its offices following a four-year ban imposed by a repressive regime. Just a handful of old hands remained to run that paper as the bulk of former staff had found employment elsewhere. Resorting to 'where there's a will there's a way' formula, the Sun was given a polish and rose from the ashes to be one of the most popular and influential newspapers in Sri Lanka. It became the training ground for hundreds of new journalists; the cream of that crop are now the leading editors there today. Likewise, we enlisted a half a dozen locals in a boot camp of intensive training and succeeded in bringing out Brunei's first daily newspaper in just two months. Today the Borneo Bulletin sells 30,000 copies daily, seven days of the week with a readership around 125,000. With a population of less than 400,000, that doesn't sound bad at all. One bugbear we still face however is finding new staff, especially in the absence of proper training facilities. To overcome this we have tried - with relative success - attracting young hopefuls through two distinctive programmes. Six years ago we introduced a weekly High School Sunday segment that lets college students work as reporters and subeditors in our newsroom while having their work published. We also provide part-time employment to undergraduates as proofreaders and interns in our newsroom. Following graduation most of them choose to become journalists. At a time when newspapers face many challenges, it is imperative to redefine our priorities and retool to keep pace with the ever-changing scenario. Now, whenever I drive between New Jersey and Philadelphia, across the great bridge named after Benjamin Franklin, the famous philosopher, writer, publisher and inventor, his words resonate with deep meaning: "When you are finished changing, you are finished."
