THE year 2023 marks the centennial celebrations of Lianhe Zaobao – the most widely-read Chinese language news title in Singapore today. Throughout its history, Zaobao has shown that it is adaptable to change and highly-attuned to the evolving tastes, interests and priorities of successive generations.

Zaobao’s editor Goh Sin Teck, joined me in The Business Times podcast studio to record the latest episode of Editors Talk, where he expressed his belief that embracing digital journalism is what will help his newsroom stay relevant and reach a wider audience. Below is an edited transcript.

Claressa Monteiro: Is the history of Lianhe Zaobao a factor when you make decisions?

Goh Sin Teck: I will always have my readers in mind. What would they be interested in? What would be their needs when they look at the newspaper today? How can we serve our readers, especially when some of our readers are actually reading both Chinese and English newspapers or news websites. How can I serve them better? Do I have a fresh perspective? Do I have a different perspective? So they can have some takeaways, from my reports, from my analysis, from my opinion pieces.

Monteiro: What is Zaobao’s brand of journalism? How do you ensure balanced reporting in your newsroom?

Goh: We still go back to the basics. It must be fact-based, it must be independent, it must be genuine – staying to the truth. These are the basic principles of journalism. Maybe it is because many readers get their news through social media. They tend to read the news that resonates with their world view, position, and they may have a misconception that the rest of the world thinks likewise with them. But that may not be the case. And because of that, some readers will always like to ask us, what is your position as a newspaper on this issue?

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Monteiro: We’re reporting the news. The position, whichever position a reader wants to take, or a consumer of our news wants to take – that is their position. We’re not trying to lead them there.

Goh: Right. I don’t take any position. If you ask me, then I want to say I will stay with the truth. And that’s my position. And that should be the position of my newspaper.

Monteiro: How do we ensure your news is the truth? Because, there’s AI-generated fake news, there’s social media, all that, right? How do you, to the best of your ability and the best of your newsroom’s ability, ensure that you are as close to the truth as you can be?

Goh: Yes, sometimes we get it wrong. It is actually a daily struggle for us when you have to beat the deadline.

And sometimes the truth will come a day or even weeks later. We try our best. I have to admit that sometimes when we make judgments, it is not always 100 per cent correct. Sometimes when I look at the headlines the day after, I tell myself that I should have presented the headline maybe in another way so that it can better reflect the nuances. But we learn from all this.

Monteiro: Zaobao is in a unique position in that your reader base cuts across a very wide demographic in terms of age, education, socio-economic standing. How do you address this very difficult question of giving your consumer what they want?

Goh: To serve my audience better, going digital is the way forward. For a newspaper, a physical newspaper, we have limited pages. I have to decide for my readers what goes into the pages.

When you are in the digital space, you don’t really have that problem anymore. I can have a wide spectrum of articles catering to the different needs of my audience. I can even have a podcast, videos, catering to those who are not very comfortable or not really fluent in reading Chinese characters, but are proficient to listen or watch. So, going digital actually helps me to reach out to more audiences.

Monteiro: So what do you think will be the biggest challenge in the coming years for you to ensure Lianhe Zaobao’s continued relevance?

Goh: Going digital is a challenge. But it has so many opportunities, so many possibilities for us. There are so many things that we can do on the digital platform and we are just at the beginning stage of artificial intelligence (AI). How can we better use AI in our work to serve our audience better? And I think exciting times are awaiting us.

The other challenge is social media. You have readers from different camps and they expect the newspaper to report news according to their position. They are very vocal and they will try to influence the position of the newspaper. And if we are so easily swayed by all these opinions, then we may get lost, we may get confused. But we have to stay our course.

Off The Record is a monthly column on the modern news industry from an insider’s perspective. We welcome feedback and suggestions at btnews@sph.com.sg.