The Straits Times in those days looked like the Daily Express, the British daily, due in no small part to the page design skills of T.S. Khoo, who worked in Kuala Lumpur before becoming the group editor in Singapore. Khoo admired British traditions, like many of The Straits Times editors of that time who were schooled in the old ways of the British colonial era. They were respectful, even fearful, of establishment. In their mid-40s to 50s, they were comfortably ensconced in some comfort zone, smugly satisfied, happily powerless. The Straits Times had strange editorial aspirations in those days, I felt. When Princess Anne broke a leg while going about her equestrian pursuits, the story was displayed on page one. A modest single column, but I did not think it merited being on page one.
Young Singaporeans like me could be forgiven for thinking The Straits Times of the day was a newspaper being produced for and read in the main by British expatriates, who supplemented their daily reading fare with British national dailies flown to Singapore. As British subjects (as it was stated on our identity cards), we all grew up singing God Save the King in school before going on to changing ‘king’ to ‘queen’, with the ascendancy to the British throne of Elizabeth the Second. Then one fine day in 1965, we all began murmuring Majulah Singapura with new patriotic fervour. Young journalists like me were not too enamoured with the superciliousness of our former colonial masters, unlike some of our editors, who grew up accepting that the sun would never set on the British Empire.
But I kept my wisdom to myself, not wanting to get on the wrong side of my superiors who harboured fond thoughts of Rule Britannia. Mind you, there were economic jitters when Britain closed down Her Majesty’s naval base in Sembawang in 1968. Plagued by the financial strains of maintaining an empire, Britain withdrew its forces east of Suez. As many as 40,000 jobs in Singapore were put in jeopardy. Scores of bars near the base closed overnight with the loss of the custom of British servicemen. Women who worked the bars had a love-hate relationship with the servicemen. They were quite amenable to giving the servicemen a good time and tomfoolery was rife in the dim confines of those bars, but seldom would these women, particularly Chinese women, entertain the thought of getting into a closer relationship with these men in uniform. It was beneath their self-esteem.
Those were also the days when British managers ruled the land. They were often lauded for their aptitude and unique talent. We were stunned one night to learn of the death of the daughter of a top British VIP who was providing invaluable services to Singapore. His daughter — young, beautiful and fun-loving — died in a road accident when riding pillion one night on her way home after a party. Many of us pious types were stunned to learn that this distinguished gentleman had such a devil-may-care daughter.
The business of generating content for the company’s newspapers was tough, as it has always been. Getting the paper printed and out into the streets each day was an arduous daily struggle, especially when the two editorial offices were operating more than 500 kilometres apart. The circulation was climbing in pace with the growing population, booming economy and more English-educated people coming into the workforce and reading newspapers. It was imperative, come rain or shine (the newspaper’s battle cry) that our readers be served their daily diet of news, first thing in the morning. The Straits Times was indeed the fount of information then, as it still is today, for many quarters of the population. Radio provided occasional excitement, for example, when the Thomas Cup matches were broadcast live during the glory days of Rudy Hartono and the Great Dane, Erland Kops. Colour television was still a faraway dream in the late 60s when we were rookie reporters. Graduates joining the newsroom could be counted on the fingers of one hand. They only did so, in growing numbers, in the early 70s and they were mainly women. Their male counterparts had to don uniforms and perform national service.
A.C. (Bill) Simmons, the managing director, decided quite rightly that a new printing press was needed. It would run faster and also bring out more copies of a newspaper whose ink would not come off the page and onto your fingers. A grand sum of $20 million was invested into enhancing the production process. Each night, once the last plate was locked into place, the machine would rumble into life, like a mighty beast awakened from its slumber. Even from our editorial offices at the front of the building, a good 50 metres away from the printing section, we could feel the building shake. That meant all was well and we could soon pack up and go home.
Some of my older colleagues, who had looked as if they had been drained of their last ounce of energy working the late night stint, would jump onto their feet, energised at the thought of going home to the bosom of their families, and literally sprint for the exit. The younger ones among us would discuss which nightspot to go to, if we had some extra bucks in our pockets. We did not have much choice in those days as most places closed at midnight. The younger ones would often head to Tivoli, a beer garden in Orchard Road where Lucky Plaza now stands, and strike up a conversation with the girls relaxing there after their night’s toil in the various bars around town. Or I would play eight-ball pool with drunken American oil-riggers at $20 a game, a huge wager for an impoverished journalist like me. But living dangerously, if it could be called that, was second nature to many of us in those days. And in my case, it was for a few dollars more to supplement my meagre income.
Like most evenings in the newsroom, there would be a fair bit of shouting as the business of slotting news copy into pages got underway. The chief sub would invariably shout to the news desk deputies to hurry up with the reporters’ copy and the news desk chappies would, in turn, admonish their counterparts on the subs desk for creating a ruckus over nothing. The production foreman would be grumbling to the managing editor, today’s equivalent of the night editor, to hurry up with the edited copy as his linotypists were hungry for work. Krishnan, the office peon, who had the ability to take a nap while propped against a pillar in the newsroom — he worked in the morning as well — would be startled into wakefulness by frantic calls of “down” from the subs desk. That was the order to take copy from the newsroom to the linotypists. In many newspaper offices of old, the newsroom would be situated above the printing area, hence copy would literally be sent down a chute. In my time, the newsroom and the production department at Times House were on the same ground floor, but the traditional shouts of “down” persisted.
Tardy copy, for whatever reason, was and is the bane of any newsroom. Reporter Soh Tiang Keng would tear his hair out in frustration at finding his telephone cord all snarled up, the result of his daily tussle with the contraption. In exasperation, he would hurl the phone at his colleague seated opposite him, when the latter infuriated him with snide remarks, but the phone would bounce back at poor Soh, its coiled line acting like a mighty spring. Hilarious. Reporter Anthony Lourdes once went over to sub-editor Jackie Sam with spike in hand when Sam made fun of his copy. The spike was a device in those days on which rejected copy was impaled. Copy was not thrown away into the bin in case it had to be retrieved. An alarmed Sam scrambled into the safety of Peter Lim’s tiny executive editor’s office. Lim wisely locked the door as Lourdes stood outside, brandishing the spike. He left when Lim, a martial arts exponent, calmed him down and gave him the rest of the day off. Lim proved himself quite the hero again when he sprang into action on another day with the office fire extinguisher. A wastepaper basket, filled with the debris of our abandoned attempts to impose our will upon a story, had gone up in flames, probably caused by a reporter’s discarded cigarette stub. We did smoke a lot in those days. The extinguisher lashed about with demented vigour in Lim’s untrained hands. The fire was put out, but collateral damage was quite extensive. But we all praised Lim for his timely act.
As I said, it was a daily struggle to get the work done on time. On one wall in the newsroom above the subs desk where I was sent to in 1971 — to fill up the slack caused by a chap who had gone on two weeks’ honeymoon — was a huge bank of lights with numbers blazing at the start of my shift. They indicated the pages that were being made up in the stone room. That was the part of the production department where lead slugs — hot from where they had been created by the linotype machines — would be fitted into frames to make up a page. Each page would need hundreds of such slugs. When a page was completed and sent for plating, the production foreman would head for a bank of switches on a wall in the production area and turn off the switch corresponding to the number of that page. In the editorial department, that page on the bank of lights would go black.
As one of the subs responsible for keeping the copy flowing from the editorial department to the production department, I would be intensely gratified to see the lights go off one by one. By the end of the work day, at about 11pm when the entire bank of lights would go dark, we would heave a collective sigh of relief, lean back in our seats, and wipe the sweat from our brows with paper from the stack of scrap newsprint. It was absorbent material and it would come away, translucent with the grime from our brows.
Why grime? You see, part of our work as subs was to interact with the stone hands, the guys who made up the pages. We would stand in front of these stone hands, making sure the story could fit into the space allocated for it on the page. That meant getting the stone hand to cut the lead slugs at various points so that they fit snugly into the allocated space. This called for lots of mental dexterity on the part of the sub and digital dexterity on the part of the stone hand. Good teamwork ensured that pages rolled off the production floor with clockwork regularity. There was no time to ponder and delay the flow of work. Sub-editors learned the art of making swift decisions. It was a continuous tussle between editorial and production to ensure that things got going speedily, with no slip-ups in copy editing. In many instances, cutting from the bottom of a story would be good enough to ensure the right fit. But sometimes, that could prove fatal if the punch line of the story was at its bottom. With such stories, the cuts had to be made in the middle of the story, sometimes in several places. Most of us hated working in the stone room, but the truth is, good stone subs actually helped speed things up so that deadlines could be met.
But what was really a matter of life and death, in all senses of the expression, was the nightly exchange of flongs somewhere along the midpoint of the highway between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Let me explain. Such an exchange was necessary as some pages were made up in Singapore and the others in Kuala Lumpur. The Straits Times had split into two separate entities (The Straits Times in Singapore and The New Straits Times in Malaysia) with the breakup of Malaysia in 1965, a few years before I joined, and so pages comprising reports from the Malaysian side were made up in Kuala Lumpur. These pages would be exchanged with the early pages made up in Singapore. By 7pm each day, these pages would be made into flongs to be rushed over to the other side. A flong — a papier mâché mould of the completed page — would be made with the application of heat and pressure. A plate would be made by pouring molten lead into the flong to create a replica of the original page and this would be mounted on the printing machine. This was how the newspaper was made from typewritten word to linotype to plate in the late 60s when I first began working for The Straits Times.
It was hot, sweaty and grimy work, as I said. But it gave us good practice in learning how to be precise in writing to length. Reporters learned to write stories to lengths decided by the news desk. A single-column story would merit a length of eight paragraphs — about 200 words. A lead story, about 20 paragraphs, or about 600 words. A good sub would be able to “cast” a story according to space allocated on the page, like a fly angler casting for trout hiding in the shadows on the far bank of a stream. Sending over too much copy — which had to be laboriously typeset by the linotypist — and then having it “wasted” as it could not fit into finite space, earned the wrath of the production foreman as it slowed the production process. These days computerised operations have taken out much of the onerous discipline in writing stories to length as the word count is automatically indicated on one’s computer terminal, even as one writes. Still, the ability to write to length is an exactitude that is cherished even today as it helps to keep the production process moving along with the precision that is needed to churn out hundreds of thousands of printed newspapers on time.
Ernest Wong, CEO of MediaCorp in the early 2000s, where I worked as a pioneer editor of the TODAY newspaper, used to marvel at the ability of the newsroom to churn out thousands of words to fill up a newspaper every day. “A most difficult business,” he would say at our weekly meetings with him. “There are easier ways to make money.” TODAY did in fact turn a profit after five years under Wong, a banker by profession, at the helm. It was a remarkable achievement as it had to grapple with the competition posed by a giant of an incumbent, The Straits Times.
Back to the flongs. Getting the flongs exchanged on time was of paramount importance. Some six flongs or so would be hurriedly prepared in both offices. Speedy drivers would rush to exchange the flongs, each setting out from their respective offices at about 8pm. They would meet somewhere around Batu Pahat, where the exchange would be made by the roadside, the only light coming from the headlights of their vehicles. John, who regularly made the run from Singapore, drove with the maniacal fury of a frustrated Formula 1 ex-champion. He had 90 minutes to reach the rendezvous and 90 minutes for the return dash. He would be expected to show up at Times House by about 11pm, in time to get his flongs from KL into the production process so that all the plates could be mounted into the printing press not later than midnight.
Sometimes, John would show up late because the Mini which he drove would break down. At times, he went off the road and had to find his way back to Times House by flagging down and taking a ride from a passing vehicle. He made better time when he drove the company Jaguar when it was not requisitioned for use by a company bigwig. The precariousness of the flong-exchanging operation, which would sometimes defy our efforts to bring out a complete newspaper, was reduced when the company decided to charter a Cessna to carry out these daily despatches. The service was further enhanced when the frequency of commercial flights made the Cessna service redundant. In time, photographic transfer of pages over the telephone line reduced such mechanical transfers by hand to just a historical footnote. For example, the pages of the International Herald Tribune, made up in Paris and transmitted over the telephone line, meant that the newspaper could be printed in Singapore at the same time that it was being printed in Paris. When I was part of the editorial team of TODAY, the newspaper headed by P.N. Balji, its first editor-in-chief in 2000, the pages were made up on computer terminals located in the heart of the city. From there they were transmitted by broadband link to the printing press in Loyang.
Such computerised operations engendered great flexibility in the production process. It allowed TODAY to get a foothold in the lucrative business of newspaper publishing, even though it was a smidgeon of a company facing the might of a billion-dollar enterprise that is The Straits Times. In the 60s, The Straits Times had a virtual monopoly on publishing and printing, as it does today. Those were the days when journalists shared the romance associated with the smell of ink and newsprint with their colleagues in the production department. We would often sneer, in jest, at one another. The journalists would say that without their stories, there would be no need to print anything, and the printers would say that without their skills, there would be no vehicle for journalists to tell their stories. But it was friendly teasing at worst and when the crunch came with a desire to cripple The Straits Times, both sides showed a remarkable camaraderie and guerrilla-style alacrity that made the strike possible.
In the hectic rush and the daily grind to bring out the newspaper, we seldom stopped to think whether we were being paid fair wages for what was, in reality, a very tough and demanding job. That harsh reality only impinged on our consciousness when we compared what we earned with that of people we met in the course of our daily work.
I was once assigned to cover British Army Day, a day when the British Army opened its doors to the public. A lieutenant showed us around. He was very kind, a public relations gem, who spoke English with a refined accent. Towards the end of the day, when we became friends of sorts over a glass or two of beer, he asked me what I earned. I told him, matter-of-factly. His face registered shock. He became embarrassed when I asked him what he earned. “Come, come,” I said, “I told you what I earn, now it’s your turn.” He said wryly: “$1,500. And my job is nowhere as tough and demanding as yours.” Now it was my turn to be stunned. I was earning all of $400, including $60 as transport allowance. I eased his discomfort by saying: “You know, Tom, I always knew I should have joined the army.”
Getting our job done meant cultivating contacts — people who could furnish us with story leads as they worked in places where they were usually the first to know when something serious happened. It could be a major highway accident, a violent murder, a police raid or instances when bigwigs showed up unexpectedly in public.
For instance, a contact once alerted me to the fact that several police cars had converged at Jurong Bird Park on a Sunday evening. I hastened to the area with veteran cameraman Ali Yusoff. Several policemen were milling around the foot of a path leading to the top of the hill. We waited there, standing concealed behind some bushes. In a while, Lee Kuan Yew came into view, with his wife and children. Nothing really exciting, just a family dinner outing. But what caught my eye — and Ali’s — was the fact that the prime minister was wearing shorts, perhaps for the first time in public. Ali clicked away furiously. Lee stopped, looked at us with a half-smile and asked: “What are you doing here?” I answered cheerily: “Just doing our job, Prime Minister.” Lee thought for a while. “Tell you what,” he said. “You take my photograph when we come out — after dinner, ok?”
What for, I asked Ali, we have already got our picture. But obediently, we waited. An hour later, down came Lee and family, but, lo and behold, this time he was wearing a pair of longs, in grey, his favourite colour at the time. Ali clicked away. Lee passed by, beaming. I was nonplussed. But my mind was already fashioning a headline: “Up the hill in shorts and down in longs”, with appropriate photos juxtaposed and an appropriate cheeky caption. What a scoop, I told Ali. A taciturn man at the best of times, Ali twirled his thick moustache and kept silent.
The story I had planned was never written; the photographs as I had pictured them in my mind never saw daylight. Peter de Cruz, the duty editor, grinned amiably when I tried to sell him my story idea. He said something like: “I think Mr Lee might not like your story.” What appeared was just a picture of the prime minister looking out from the wall surrounding the restaurant, which Ali had shot from the foot of the hill. Whether he was wearing shorts or longs could not be ascertained. I later learned from a chagrined member of Lee’s security detail, a friend of mine from university days, that he had to dash to Lee’s house to get the required pair of longs. I only wrote my story of Lee in shorts decades later, shortly after the media reported how President S.R. Nathan met reporters at the gate of his home in a sarong. My great scoop was abominably late — by about 25 years.
If I had been duty editor, would I have run the story? I was asked that question by young students in a journalism class recently. Sure I would, I told them. The story would have portrayed the prime minister as a kind man, a man who made time for his family — someone who was one of us, a man to be loved, not feared. Who knows, Lee’s good example, even when he was so busy, could have encouraged future generations to aspire to family-life balance, to enjoy what they were working at, as well as the warmth of home and family. Who knows? But even in my time, our editors felt that it was better not to write anything that would raise eyebrows at City Hall. Better safe than sorry, journalists were told back in the 60s and 70s.
I acquired my first big contact when I was newly assigned to a much sought-after post on the crime desk after my first year, which was spent reporting on cases at the subordinate and magistrates’ courts. He was introduced to me — over the telephone — by fellow reporter Cheong Yip Seng, five years my senior. I was inheriting Cheong’s much sought-after position on the crime desk as he was moving up to news desk. I thought he would pass me his little black book of contacts. Instead, he introduced me to that one and only “crime” contact of his. After a few tip-offs, the contact telephoned and said he wanted to meet me for drinks. We arranged to meet at the Mayfair bar, a stone’s throw from Hill Street Fire Station where he worked as a telephone operator. In that job, he was in the front line receiving calls for emergency services; in fact, for help of any kind. He was an amiable man, and we got along quite well. The only problem was he brought along a number of his colleagues, and I had in my pocket only $20 to spend. Looking back, I think it was a meeting that I should have rejoiced in as I got to know all the other guys who manned the phone lines on round-the-clock shifts. We drank a great amount of ice-cold Tiger. An endless flow of jugs arrived at our table. It was a convivial get-together. The waitresses were delightful. By the end of the evening, we were like brothers, my contact, his friends, and I. There was the matter of the $50-bill, though. My spirits sank. I wondered if the manager would accept my Titoni watch as surety until payday. Anthony Lourdes, a hardboiled colleague who had joined me for the evening, was as broke as I was. But he had wonderful survival skills. Anthony spotted another “contact” at the bar, a wealthy shipyard owner. A whispered conversation ensued between Anthony and K.K. Ching, who waved me over. “Clement, I have been told of your small problem. Let me help you.” He reached into his pocket and came up with an enormous wad of $50 notes. It was a mind-boggling sight. Ching peeled off two notes and handed them to me with an air of fatherly concern: “Will this do?” he asked. I assured him that “this” would be just fine and that I would pay him, come payday. He waved me away. From Mayfair, I proceeded with my newfound friends — who were by then feeling peckish with all the alcohol sloshing around in their system — to Jalan Sultan for roti murtabak. Satiated, they next asked if I had sufficient funds to head for the red-light area of Desker Road. I drew the line at that. “No more cash lah,” I said in all honesty. They understood and we parted saying we would meet again in a month’s time.
The next day, I told Peter Lim, who was executive editor then, of my night on the town, entertaining a contact to whom I had been introduced by Cheong. Would he endorse the need for regular reimbursement? He agreed without too much discussion. It was something that I liked about Lim. He could see the merit of any request and did not waste time, unlike the filibustering chappies in the personnel department. Lim said that my expenses were justified and I should not be put out of pocket as I was in actual fact furthering the interests of the company. The bottom line was that he would authorise a monthly sum of $50 a month from petty cash. In time, these contacts were passed on to other colleagues who took over my beat on the crime desk, and I no longer made the monthly excursions to the various bars.
Today, when I join my colleagues for happy hours, $50 for my own drinks can go in a flash. In those days in the early 70s, that sum of money could keep a bunch of contacts happy throughout a night of food and drinks. Despite what might be considered small change today, we managed to get the job done in my time, and stay not only ahead of the competition posed by the prolific efforts of the various Chinese newspapers, but also raise the bar of investigative journalistic standards in our own fashion.
Being paid so poorly did not do much for our self-esteem. Worse still, one wondered if one could afford to get married. There were enough women who felt attracted to what they thought was the glamorous lifestyle of journalists. But they did not stay enthralled for long once they found out how impoverished journalists actually were.
Each night, as we made for the Times House exit, wending our way through the production facility where the mighty printing machine thrummed and shook the floor on which we walked, we wondered how the company could be so tight-fisted not to share the millions in profits it made, profits that we helped it make. How could it be so disdainful about our plea for it to throw a few crumbs our way? That painful reality that journalists could be treated shabbily hit home when, towards the end of 1971, we found out that our colleagues in the printing department would be receiving a higher bonus than we would. We were exasperated. How could these blue-collar people be treated better than us, who churned out the stories that drew the readers, boosted the circulation and, in turn, generated the advertising dollars? This surely was the height of injustice. Shouldn’t workers under the same roof merit parity in the payment of bonus?
We did not question if general manager Ronald Scott and those above him — managing director A.C. Simmons and others in those stratospheric circles — drew their special bonuses. We were sure they did. They wore ties, they were driven around in company limousines, they lived in company houses. Simmons had his dream house in Bermuda where he lived five months a year, unlike we simple humble folk, who worried if we had enough to pay the bus fare to get to work, especially towards the end of the month before payday. We were somewhat perturbed to find out that the engineer at Times House was a man whose last job was as a railyard repairman toiling somewhere in Glasgow. But what the heck, he was British, a foreign talent of sorts. We wondered if he could fix the printing machine. He went around in white overalls, the only guy in the entire company who had such a uniform. We never doubted that he too was getting special treatment. But surely, it was just plain common sense, we felt, that the company would see it fit to ensure fair treatment for all its Asian workers, especially in the payment of bonuses. Surely, an equitable sharing of the profits made good sense. But The Straits Times did not bother too much about such niceties. In any case, bonus was a non-negotiable issue, as mandated by labour laws. Thus, payment of how much bonus to pay was a decision that was entirely in the hands of the company. In other words, you could either take it or lump it.
But a small group of journalists decided to throw caution to the wind. We were young, in our early 20s, fired by socialist ideals, iconoclastic in nature, and we placed our faith in the hope that fortune would favour the brave. And having come from impoverished backgrounds, most of us Young Turks felt that, as rookie journalists, we really had nothing much to lose — not having achieved anything much yet — by challenging the status quo. But could we get the others in our motley bunch of journalists — old tired souls, young wannabes still wet behind the ears, and the others in between — who went through the daily motions day in, day out, to share our ideals for social justice, respect and a desire for the truth?