Malay Mail to change from free afternoon daily to paid morning newspaper.

The Malay Mail, one of the nation’s oldest newspapers, today , announced a strategic change in its business model – from a free afternoon daily to a paid morning newspaper.

“The new morning paper will be positioned as a content provider that reports the news without any fear or favour,” said Yushaimi Yahaya, the Editor in Chief of The Malay Mail.

“We will report on a wide spectrum of issues that affect Malaysians of all communities. We will give voice to our readers and invite opinions and commentaries that highlight a diverse range of viewpoints on a particular debate.

“We will focus on in-depth investigative reports on issues that impact our readers and Malaysians in general. Our content will set us apart from the competition. We believe there is a demand for such content and we are well positioned to fill that void,” he said.

“Recent feedback from the public and an analysis of the historical track record of The Malay Mail reveals that there is a critical mass of readers out there who will be willing to pay for the type of content we intend to publish,” he added.

He said that the switch from afternoon to morning is primarily due to the fact that the benefits of an afternoon paper have been voided by the advent of technology. Consumers today get late breaking news through alerts on their phones, iPads and the internet.

“A morning paper will further allow us to give our readers in-depth reports of news events that occur during the news day. If we continued as an afternoon paper, we would be put at a disadvantage as we would not be able to report the day’s events the following day, as it would be stale news after one reads the morning papers.”

Yushaimi said that The Malay Mail will be launched as a paid morning paper within the next few weeks. Planning is currently underway to ensure a smooth transition.

“As we work towards moving from a free paper to a paid model, we will gradually decrease our print run as an interim measure, until the new paper is launched. We seek our readers’ understanding on this. They can however continue to access The Malay Mail via our website,” said Yushaimi.

“All of us at The Malay Mail are very excited about the prospects for the paper as we transition from a free daily to a paid model. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our loyal readers and trust that they will continue to support as us they have done over the years,” he said.

“I would also like to thank our advertisers, clients and partners who have stood by us during this time. I wish to assure them that we will do everything possible to ensure that the new paid morning paper will be an even better value proposition to address their marketing communications needs,” he said.