In light of increasingly angry calls to shut down Singapore Press Holding (SPH)’s STOMP site, the company has clarified its stand – the review will not result in the closure of STOMP.
Patrick Daniel, editor-in-chief, English and Malay Newspapers Division, Singapore Press Holdings said in a statement to Marketing: "We do not foresee that the review will result in closure of Stomp."
Daniel spoke at the World Association of Newspapers conference in Hong Kong last week and said that the company has been reviewing the STOMP site, and will be considering whether heavier moderation would be needed. But he clarified that this will not result in the closure of the site.
A huge driver of internet traffic
Perhaps these numbers may give insight on why SPH is still running STOMP. Of SPH’s digital assets, STOMP pulls in the second highest amount of internet traffic at (66.8 million monthly page views) , trailing only behind Zaobao.com (128 million page views a month).
This far surpasses SPH’s traditional assets Straits Times and Business Times online. STOMP’s Lollipop site, which runs entertainment gossip and launched more recently in end 2012, is already pulling in 10.8 million page views a month (See figures below).
From Marketing’s observation, the site itself does not carry external advertisements.
Here are SPH’s site traffic rates, as per its website:
Publication
Monthly page views
Unique Audience
Straits Times online
21.4 million
2.9 million
Business Times online
1.8 million
227,000
STOMP
66.8 million
1.6 million
omy.sg
4.1 million
373,000
AsiaOne Homepage
4.4 million
746,000
AsiaOne News
5.5 million
1.3 million
Zaobao.com
128 million
11.9 million
The New Paper
1.94,000
570,000
Berita Harian
183,000
29,000
Shareinvestor.com
12 million
100,000
HardwareZone
36 million
1.96 million
Straits Times Lollipop
10.8 million
545,000
ST Razor TV
9 million
329,000
Cyberbullying and inaccuracy
Daniel's responses were to the growing influence of a petition to close STOMP. As of today, the petition has 23,323 supporters. The petition called for STOMP’s closure on the basis of it publishing stories that was allegedly fabricated “in the expense of other citizens” and promoted cyber-bullying, said a note on the petition. The site also cited several posts such as : Editor-in-Chief apologises to SMRT for Stomp Picture, Inaccurate news of NSman in train.
The petition has caught the attention of the Media Development Authority who said it was not its place to “influence the editorial slant of sites” but would take action if a site was in breach of its code of practice, later inviting STOMP detractors to propose stronger regulations.
Several netizens have remarked that the MDA has required other local sites such as the Breakfast Network and the Mothership.sg to be regulated, however.