Balji, the editor with a double distinction – by Abhijit Nag

 PN Balji occupies a unique place in Singapore journalism. The Straits Times has produced eminent editors like Peter Lim, Cheong Yip Seng, Leslie Fong and Han Fook Kwang. The Business Times has been edited by doyens like Mano Sabnani and Patrick Daniel. Warren Fernandez, the current editor-in-chief of The Straits Times, is no less impressive with degrees from Oxford and Harvard. But Balji alone has the distinction of being involved in the launch of two daily newspapers in Singapore. Starting as deputy editor of The New Paper when it debuted in 1988, he soon succeeded Peter Lim as editor and edited the paper for more than a decade, making it a successful, popular daily, before he went on to launch Today in the year 2000.

All that’s history now. Today has ceased to be a printed newspaper and exists online only. The New Paper has become a freesheet. Neither bears any resemblance to the papers Balji edited and popularised. Recalling his unique role in Singapore journalism is going into history – and even newspaper readers don’t care much for history.

As the Rolling Stones sang:

Who wants yesterday’s papers?
Who wants yesterday’s girls?
Who wants yesterday’s papers?
Nobody in the world.

That was from the Rolling Stones’ album Between the Button released in 1967 when newspapers were the primary source of information. Now not everybody wants even today’s newspapers.

I never imagined newspapers would be in such dire straits when I entered the profession five years after the Beatles split. It was a time of folk rock and heavy metal, when we didn’t have personal computers. I started at a newspaper in Kolkata in India where, when computers were installed in the office, we journalists weren’t allowed to touch them. Instead we wrote our stories on typewriters and edited them with pen or pencil and sent the stories to printers who typeset them on computers. That was done under trade union pressure to save the jobs of the printers who would have otherwise been redundant.

I never used a computer till I came to Singapore. And the man who brought me was Balji.

It was the winter of 1987. I responded to an advertisement for a newspaper job which didn’t give the name or location of the organisation but simply included a postbox number where the application was to be sent. That was how I ended up meeting Balji.

He and two others from Singapore interviewed me in Delhi. Singapore Press Holdings – then called The Straits Times Press (1975) Ltd – was looking for people to launch a new paper. And I was lucky enough to be hired.

I was dazzled when I came to Singapore.  The New Paper newsroom seemed a virtual United Nations with Indians, Filipinos, Americans, Britons and Malaysians working together with Singaporeans. Peter Lim, the first editor of The New Paper, was cheerful and friendly with no airs about him. Balji also never threw his weight around.

The New Paper’s sales soared during the Gulf War (August 1990 – February 1991). By then, Balji was the editor. Sharp, unassuming, able to get along with everyone, he oversaw a paper very different from The Straits Times. The New Paper was colourful, with lots of pictures and graphics, the language simple and racy.

The New Paper was launched because Singapore’s then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew wanted an English newspaper that would appeal to the workers.

The paper owed its look and language to Balji and his talented artists, reporters and editors. Unlike The Straits Times, which had legions of subscribers, The New Paper depended on newsstand sales. That made the front page very important. It had to attract people so they would buy the paper. A lot of thought and discussion went into the making of the front page – and indeed the other pages.

The New Paper had what it called a Big Desk of sharp-thinking editors, artists and reporters exchanging ideas about how to tell each story – what pictures to use, the right headline, and the angle or perspective from which the story should be written. Football and graphics were two of the paper’s strongest selling points.

Balji had his nose to the ground, knew what his readers wanted, and could coax the best out of his staff.

Some of the people hired by Balji excelled later in life. One is an award-winning television documentary maker. Another is a top executive at a leading English newspaper published from China. A third is a top executive at SPH. Then there was the young woman who went on to work for a leading newspaper in America. And these are just the Indians who once worked for The New Paper. Some of the Singaporeans and others who worked for the paper have been no less successful.

The New Paper newsroom buzzed with youth and energy. The atmosphere seemed friendly with young people working cheerfully.

But Balji says he wanted a new challenge. He left The New Paper to launch Today in 2000.

I too had to leave a few years later.

But I haven’t lost touch with Balji. He has always been there for me, a pillar of support in adversity. We still meet. Occasionally, he treats me and my wife to a breakfast or dinner at a restaurant.  

He knows the food we like and we know his taste for plain idli and uttapam at an unpretentious South Indian restaurant in Little India.

The food is always good and the conversation even better. Incisive, irreverent, he loves to tease and joke, but laced with the jests and banter are shrewd insights and observations.

He may no longer be a working journalist, but he still has a journalist’s mind – and that never calls it a day until it is forced to shut down by death or dementia.

He can still churn out a good read – The Reluctant Editor, his memoirs, has been a bestseller.

I am also struck by the words he uses in conversation. Seeing a child’s picture the other day, he said the little boy looked rather “morose”.  Praising a Straits Times columnist, he said she could nevertheless be “ponderous”. These are not words we use every day, not when chatting with friends, but they trip off his tongue.

Balji is different. He was an introvert, he says, who became an extrovert because of the nature of his job. He enjoys talking to everyone from a waiter in a restaurant to the artists and reporters he worked with.

The New Paper I recall was a lively place where twentysomethings and youthful thirtysomethings exchanged high fives, called both male and female colleagues “guys”, and news reports and feature articles alike included the latest buzzwords and phrases like “pushing the envelope” and “thinking out of the box”. It was as trendy as any fashionista. But it never lost touch with ordinary Singaporeans, highlighting the issues that concerned them.

Balji kept the newspaper grounded with the help of his reporters who had talk to the people to get their stories.

The New Paper continued reporting the same kind of stories after Balji’s departure.  Maybe it had no choice. A newspaper like a bestselling writer seldom deviates from a successful formula.

So Balji’s legacy endured after he left the paper.

The New Paper is different now because the market has changed and it has become a freesheet. People no longer have to be tempted to buy it.

Balji says when he launched Today, people expected it to be like The New Paper. But it wasn’t so splashy or racy. Today had to be different, he explains. It gives him satisfaction that he could come up with two such different products.

In his memoirs, he wrote how he was influenced by his father, who was a poet and playwright and a trade unionist at the British naval base in Sembawang. Maybe that’s why he feels for the poor and the underdog.

He has the gift of empathy. I have seen him in Little India asking about a waiter who has gone to India to get married. He remembers people and their circumstances.

He started out as a reporter but found his true calling as a subeditor, he wrote in his memoirs. While a reporter talks to people and writes about them, the subeditor edits the reports and lays them out on newspaper pages.

But Balji also owes his success to his empathy. He could relate to ordinary people and highlight their concerns.

Happily drinking coffee or beer in a coffee shop, he says he doesn’t miss his newspaper days.

Those were boom times for Singapore newspapers. The Straits Times earned more money in a month than the New York Times in a whole year. Advertisers, newsmakers, news seekers, everyone had to rely on newspapers. There was no social media to provide an alternative source of information.

I have no idea how many people Balji hired as editor. But I know what a difference he made in my life. After all, he brought me to Singapore. A place I have come to love with all my heart.

 

The copyright of this article belongs to Abhijit Nag, a veteran print media journalist who worked for 18 years at The New Paper and The Straits Times. This article may not be reproduced without his prior permission.