I should have thought twice about professionalising Breakfast Network, which started as a labour of love eight months ago by a group of people who got the itch to write. We put up a no-brainer website, came up with a concept and populated it with content. We thought we had a formula: People have no time to read everything so why not filter the news and present them from a certain point of view? Not necessarily alternative, but which asks important questions. Then we moved into reporting. I daresay our reports on the Hong Lim Park protests are quite different from what was reported on other online media and in the rather subdued MSM. We tried to marry the discipline and rigour of mainstream media with the freedom that the Internet gives to do various styles of reporting and writing. We insisted that every article carries a byline and that errors are recorded at the end of posts. Somehow the traction we got gave us the confidence that we could actually make this work on a more professional foundation, rather than relying on whether we had the spare time and energy to write for and manage the site, and depending on the goodwill of unpaid contributors. So I incorporated Breakfast Network as a company, and knowing how easy it is for editorial control to slip because of shareholder pressures, put up the money myself. We felt we needed a legal entity, a commercial vehicle, to do business. That’s the bit which is ironic. We wanted to be legit, transparent and tightly structured. It also means we’re easy to target by the G. It’s our fault that we declared ourselves a commercial entity although we know full well we’ll not be minting money. Perhaps, we should have gone guerilla, underground, use some server from abroad and all sorts of pseudonyms to confuse everyone about who are the people really behind the site. Then we could allow all sorts of people to post comments, do plenty of drumming and escalate the number of eyeballs. No need to worry about making money to cover cost and to hire good people to raise the quality of content. Now we have to sign on to a thicket of rules, like MSM. And we still don’t know what is to come with the revised Broadcasting Act. We’re in two minds about continuing Breakfast Network even though we actually on the way to re-launching a new website which we paid for. Something more professional. And hopefully, with professional staffing.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 16:39:34 +0000
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