4 Years of TWE: A Word from the Founder
- Sherman Yap
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Written by Shermanyap1234
About* 4 years ago today, I posted the first publication of The Weekly Edition to Twitter (true name). As for why it took me around 25 days to do so is a fact lost to history, because I simply cannot remember. Here's a funny story attributed to that asterisk in the beginning:
The Unofficial Official Anniversary Date
When we do stuff like this, I often ask... is it April 17th, May 12th, or 13th the true anniversary date of TWE? But here's what I think happened with that first anniversary post in 2022: I've simply forgotten. It probably took me one day later to realise that it was the first anniversary of this godforsaken internet/virtual journalistic venture, that made me go to Illustrator, make a new file and create something to mark the date. And as for the rest after 2022, I guess 'May 13th' (however unfortunate) just stuck.
So... to offset this astounding feat of carelessness (and incompentence), I dedicate this article to the Community whom I've been a part of for a little over 6 years.
Why Start TWE?
Is a question I get often. The answer? Why not? You see, I started TWE when I was still the director of BERITA in 2021. To those who don't know what BERITA is: it was the state media of MYS until October last year. During my tenure, I focused primarily on broadcasting more than editorial content (that is, Twitter posts). And when I was, I remembered how I hated the ~200-character limit that was imposed back then. But that was how the media worked then and now. Tidbits of information are just to give attention to certain events. And if necessary, a Thread to include a few more. That's all.
Before my employment at BERITA around 2019-ish (I'm old, yes), I worked for this obscure little company called Sinaran Network (or SNN). It was during my time at SNN that I found out I liked journalism. If you know me, I didn't start as a journalist back then. There were some kerfuffles here and there, and I ended up writing articles on WordPress. Oh yes, WordPress. Armed with in-game screenshots and grammar errors, I started writing articles on WordPress under SNN in 2019. I also experimented with some YouTube broadcasting with SNN, but not too much, because my hardware didn't allow me to back then.
But here's the thing — WordPress is a blogging website. Did it look generic? Yes, but it included something more than just 200 characters (that was the slogan). Context. And here's why it was (and still is) relevant: it provides essential background information that enables a reader (like you) to fully understand the picture, from all perspectives. Sure, my writing back then probably wasn't as polished as it is now, but I like to think that it helped some people who were out of the loop, people who didn't give much attention to certain events, but still managed to form their own opinions.
Before TWE
I was very fortunate enough to be able to attend some lectures by James Halvorsen (a former Ro-Finnish statesman who probably only a few know today) during my time at the University of Helsinki (Roblox, obviously). I was part of an exchange programme by the iiSpaceRocket Government's foreign ministry policy with the Finnish university in 2019.
It was there that I realised that journalism was more than just writing articles on WordPress; it was about establishing understanding in the audience. Thanks to James' lectures, I was exposed to the concepts of journalism ethics and standards, and most importantly, media bias. It was here that I understood that bias affects the narrative and the story told, and from here I made a vow to minimise leaning whichever sides there were, and to be as neutral as I humanly can. We'll get back to this.
Printing Digitally
Almost all of my media ventures were experiments. SNN, I experimented with articles through WordPress and Wix. BERITA, livestreams. NWS, wire services. And TWE? Newspapers, of course. But it seemed ironic to me that I'm imitating the art that's dying due to its digital counterpart.
I'm an avid admirer of the printing press, and you can tell this by the staunch similarity between TWE's designs and The Star's (The Star is an English newspaper in Malaysia IRL). Back when I was still deciding on what kind of design to use, I was, and you aren't gonna believe this, using PowerPoint for all of my graphic design needs.
And to those who might not know, you can create simple graphics in PowerPoint by copying and pasting. And this was exactly what I did for TWE as well.
This one you see wasn't the first mock-up; it was probably the second or third.
To me, it was a conscious decision to utilise The Star's design for TWE. But to all the eagle-eyed chaps, you might notice it isn't the modern-day design by The Star, but rather from the 90s. And you'd be right. I chose The Star because I believed it to be a perfect layout that included a bit of everything, but because it also had a bit of a charm from easier times.
The design itself reeks of nostalgia (though I wasn't even alive then in the 90s). Inspiration or blatant copying? You decide. The Star's design, specifically this variant around the early 90s, has a special place in my heart. At a glance, it isn't too messy or compact for a newspaper of that era. Checkout the broadsheet New York Times, and you would know. And in some ways, it looked like the home page of a website - it guides your eyes naturally as we would read English, from top to bottom, left to right. It's great.
Advertising with TWE
To be frank, we never got paid for any of the advertisements shown. Ever. And the reason is that we had to create our own before any of the real companies were willing to put theirs on our papers. But we mostly showed it for free because it saved me the trouble of making fake ads.
For those who would enjoy this, here are some of the ones we've made just to fill in space:
I remember making that MYS Airways advert for the last page of a certain publication, only to be pointed out afterwards that the aircraft in the frame wasn't an A320, which I originally wrote it as, but a B737. So that's a funny little detail for you.
That Mercedes-Benz 600 ad was made for HeinrichVoltz. He made that car in the advert. HFC (in case you couldn't see) stands for "Heinrich's Fine Cars", a play on hydrofluorocarbons (HFCS), which killed the ozone layer, and the slogan below reads "big price, bad cars".
Making these adverts gives me joy because it combines both things I like to do: 1) imitating real-life graphics and 2) newspapers. In my opinion, these adverts gave TWE a bit more flavour, a Malaysian flavour.
Actually Weekly?
Well, no. Obviously not. But at the beginning, we were indeed weekly, believe it or not, although it immediately fell into a million pieces by the 3rd or 4th week. When I started this, I did not work out the fact that I could not sustain publication every week for a Roblox newspaper. Lack of time and content was just the perfect recipe to fail the namesake entirely.
If you didn't know, there were also "Weekday Bits", where we sum up news daily but only on one page. At the weekend, we would then combine all the "bits" from the week to form one concise "Weekly Edition".
And thus, we've become a joke for the community ever since. We are also named the "Yearly Edition", but I would wear those names proudly.
Our Leanings
Like I said earlier, I kept my politics as neutral as humanly possible. Though some may argue that TWE may not be neutral d̶u̶e̶ t̶o̶ t̶h̶e̶ n̶a̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ o̶f̶ o̶n̶e̶ o̶f̶ m̶y̶ w̶r̶i̶t̶e̶r̶s̶. The thing is, I've tried my best in these ~6 years. I really did.
We launched our Whistleblowing system in 2022, with the now-famous "Agong Displeased" headline being the headline. Personally, I thought that the whistleblowing stuff became our branding, too. And I did think that what we would write in these reports is seismic. But get this — I worked hard to avoid being anywhere near sensationalism, but professionalism in the reporting of previously unknown stories, because I felt like they should be known, because we print the unprintable. I didn't care about who was in government and who wasn't; I cared about what they did, and whether or not they were accounted for or not. And I think this element is what distinguishes us from the other outlets, because we provide due weight to stories of scandals that were unaccounted for.
I believe this should be more of a common scene in the media, and not something to be surprised by, as some of the stories would usually be reacted to. I wish that the work I've done in some of our more popular cases, like Torn Blue and St. Regis could set an example for other journalists in Malaysia, with the emphasis on clear reporting, whistleblowing protection and most importantly, explaining it clearly and concisely.
The Community
It has been an absolute pleasure to be writing for this Community for so long. However hard it was, it was a joy to do so. The support we've gotten over the years is something I can only dream of. It's not every day you see people enthusiastically asking for the next publication because they wanna read a Roblox newspaper. But it's more than that, it's a newspaper from a Community about its people, and at the very basic level. That's all. The tone and voice of the paper is the reflection of the Community it's from and that it represents. And because of that, I'm truly honoured to be able to do so.
Which is why every single time you see a space in the paper, it would be occupied by a big text on a red background thanking you, the reader, for your support. Because we do mean it — we are beyond grateful for your time, for your support and kindness given to us that allowed us to keep going. This is what distinguishes our Community from the others, and whether or not this can be preserved is not up to me, but you.
So, for one last time, thank you for your continuous support. Truly.
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