Capturing the voices of the subaltern: the TRS dilemma.

OK we seem to have gotten into this debate about editorial control when it comes to the articles that TRS publishes and I have received a lot of quite nasty comments for suggesting an greater exercise of quality control on the part of the TRS team. I can see where they're coming from and they're trying to strike a balance - but I am pretty surprised at how much Singaporeans react against this idea and have confused it with that of censorship. For them, it's like "as if we don't have enough censorship already in Singapore and this guy wants more self-censorship in the alternative media?" But for now, I want to deal with the comment left me by the TRS admin. Let's start with his comment:

Do you know what it means to edit an article?

Hi Limpeh,

Thanks for the detailed feedback. You are right, there is a lot more we could do to control at least the quality of writing in some of our articles and the poor quality of some of our article do indeed turn away more highly educated potential followers of our website. We are aware of this but have come to accept it as a trade off. Like you said, there is a balance to be had between representing the authentic voices of our readers and being a highly professional and credible website.

The balance between these qualities will ultimately determine the type of readers we attract. I think that a good comparison might be TOC. From what I can gather, they have very good writers and their articles are highly intellectual and pleasant to read for your average university educated Singaporean. The problem on the other hand is that the lower educated, may actually find it difficult to follow some of the arguments made simply because the level of language used is too complex or there is an assumed background knowledge of the way laws or the economy works.

The reality is that we can't please everyone, no matter how much we try. There is also a need for websites to find a niche. Since there are already other, more intellectual websites around, we feel it is important to also reach out to the 'Average Singaporean'.We may make some enemies along the way, but ultimately, we have to accept that too. No harm sharing with you that we are in dire need of manpower too. our volunteers come and go quickly and we are constantly in shortage of people helping to moderate our Facebook, website and such. Anyway, very impressed by your responses to us and many of our readers are big fan of your blog already. Hope to share more of your articles in the future :)

Is there a compromise to be reached on this issue?

So, we have already talked about the issue of quality control - if you do create an archive of 'authentic' Singaporean voices (especially those at the bottom of the food chain - the subaltern), then I wonder what the point is of such an archive? If you're trying to capture the voices of those who are not otherwise being represented in the mainstream press, then I am not sure you're using the best approach by having this 'free for all' approach - how do you think this looks from the outside? It may bring great joy to some 'average Singaporeans' to see their (rather poorly written) articles published on The Real Singapore's website, but what does this do to the overall reputation of TRS?

As for TOC, yes they do have a far more sensible structure to their approach (and I really like their website), but this is where I have to voice my main disagreement with you! Allow me to quote specifically the part of your statement I disagree with, "The problem on the other hand is that the lower educated, may actually find it difficult to follow some of the arguments made simply because the level of language used is too complex or there is an assumed background knowledge of the way laws or the economy works...  we feel it is important to also reach out to the 'Average Singaporean'." 

Should uneducated/lesser educated  people also voice their opinions online?

Whilst I can see your aim in trying to reach out to a readership who may not naturally take to TOC, I fundamentally disagree with your approach - let me spell it out to you plainly: you think that the only way to appeal to these 'average Singaporean' readers is to publish articles written by people just like them. Well, I know I am going to get a lot of hate mail for this for sounding elitist, but I disagree with you on that point. There is a huge difference between tailoring an article in very simple English specifically for people who are not very educated and simply hitting them with a very poorly written article. The former allows them to understand the issue discussed in plain language - the latter will probably only confuse them further because a poorly written article is not going to enlighten anybody. And this is not about elitism or snobbery: let's look at how it works in the real world. Time for a reality check, please.

Now I have a young nephew in primary school in Singapore and I often read with him - he would read one page, I would read the next page and so on. I do this to try to improve his English. Certainly, the books we read are quite simple and suitable for young children. My nephew would struggle to read the kind of books I enjoy because those books are aimed at a far more highly educated adult audience. However, who writes these books that my nephew reads? Are they other children or are these books written by quite highly educated adults? 

I tried to get my nephew interested in reading.

The best children's writers are not children - JK Rowling wrote the Harry Potter series in her thirties and Enid Blyton continued writing way into her sixties. There is a very big difference between someone like JK Rolwing writing a story specifically for children and a young child (like my nephew) actually writing a story. Thus that is why the textbooks used by my nephew in his primary schools, the story books he reads are all crafted by adults and not children for obvious reasons - sorry if this sounds elitist, but you have to entrust these important responsibility to people who know what they are doing, rather than make the assumption that a child is more likely to want to read the writing of another child. It doesn't work like that - children enjoy reading Harry Potter because it is stunningly well written and they probably have no desire to read each other's writing because it is of poor quality. It boils down to that: quality. 

Do you know about the Simple English version of Wikipedia? It allows those who speak English as a second/foreign language to have the same kind of experience, using Wikipedia without struggling with the language. Is the Simple English version of Wikipedia actually created or written by people who struggle with English themselves? No it isn't - it is created by people who are actually really proficient in English, even if the target audience is for people who struggle with English. We do not want a situation where the blind is leading the blind - that helps nobody. 

Who do you think should edit Wikipedia in Simple English? 

In the UK (where I live), we have a range of newspapers catering for different sections of the society. Some newspapers cater to the highly educated elites whilst others have to resort to scantily clad women and endless football coverage to sustain the interest on the "readers" with very little news content -  I am using inverted commas over the word "readers" because they are "reading" the pictures of the scantily clad women. Are the journalists who work on these tabloids barely literate themselves? No, you actually have to be pretty darn good at what you're doing because at the end of the day, you're still creating a product specifically targeting a certain section of British society and pitching it right involves actually quite a lot of business acumen and marketing know how. It's hardly the kind of job for a barely literate Brit obsessed with tits and football - they consume the tabloids, they don't write them. Big difference.

I suppose the concept of having a newspaper full of scantily clad women (yes they are topless) verging on soft core porn may be foreign to my Singaporean readers, but goodness me, this is the norm in the UK when it comes to the tabloid press trying to persuade barely literate men to buy the "newspaper" (again, I'm using the term "newspaper" with inverted commas as there is more soft core porn than news in these tabloids). 

So, to summarize: children don't write books for children: adult writers do. Wikipedia English was created for people who struggle with English, not by people who struggle with English. Likewise, the tabloid press is created  for less-educated readers who prefer bite-size chunks of news (along with loads of football and scantily clad women), not by barely literate British men. What do you think will happen if we published books written by young children - will they be as good as those written by JK Rowling? What if we allowed someone who barely speaks English to be the chief editor of Simple English Wikipedia? And what if you put someone who was barely literate in charge of a tabloid newspaper?

Let's get very practical here - life is not fair. I remember my PE lessons when I was in primary school - there was this super fat boy in my class who was hopeless at any kind of sports. The PE teachers would go out of their way to involve him, during football or basketball - we were instructed to pass the ball to him so he would have the chance to be involved, otherwise he would never be fast enough to even get anywhere near the ball during the game and he would feel left out. In real life, those who simply do not have the right writing skills will never get a job in journalism and even if they did publish a blog, they wouldn't get any readers if their articles sucked. Yet the admin team at TRS are acting like my primary school PE teachers in trying to give everyone a fair chance on their website, even those who can't write at all. What do you think happens when you try to artificially level the playing field here? 

I've got a bitter dose of reality for you that you may not like and at the risk of sounding like Miss "get out of my elite uncaring face", I'm going to say it. TRS is barking up the wrong tree when they believe that they can attract more readers by publishing badly written articles by your 'average man' in the street'. It doesn't work like that I'm afraid because of the fundamental difference between creating a product for them, rather than creating a product by them. For vs by - big difference, mind the gap. So what are you really trying to do here TRS? Do you really want them to read the articles on your website and engage them politically? Or are you giving them the chance to publish their (really bad written) articles? These are two quite different agendas here - but you're confusing them as one of the same.

Since you've said that you want to engage these people, you want less educated Singaporeans to read your website but you're afraid they will be put off by very 'cheem' articles, what should we do to help them then? I have identified the problem - now I am going to offer the solution. Let's not reinvent the wheel here and we'll follow the model that Simple English Wikipedia has set. Here are a few very simple guidelines for articles to be translated into 'Simple English (Singapore)' to appeal to your less educated Singaporean readers:

Have you ever read an article you just couldn't understand?

1. Brevity: Keep it short and sweet. The Simple English Wikipedia entries are a lot shorter than the standard version because people who struggle with English tend to read a lot more slowly and can only consume a far smaller volume of information at a go. Think about how short and simple children's books are: there are colourful pictures and very few words a page - that makes the reading process far less tedious than a wall of text.

2. Avoid big words, especially foreign ones:  keep the language as simple as possible and focus on the facts, the same way a primary school textbook would present a science lesson in very simple English. Avoid loan words from French, Latin, German, Greek, Japanese, Russian, Korean, Spanish, Italian and other languages that your audience would not be likely to know: we often take for granted that our readers will not be fazed by Latin words like bona fide, quasi, verbatim, de facto, persona non grata and ad hoc but there is always a simple English equivalent for these Latin phrases. So instead of using the term "bona fide", you can simply use words like genuine or authentic. However, loanwords from Malay, Hokkien, Cantonese and Mandarin are permitted within reason.

3. Keep it very local: avoid references to other cultures and countries. So avoid referencing Freud, Jung, Proust, Plato, Spivak, Molière or Aristotle (let's face it, if you're using Aristotle to back up your argument, you're really just showing off to the world, 'hey look how highly educated and atas I am, I am referencing Aristotle!'), you can  instead quote people like Jack Neo, Michelle Chong, Fandi Ahmad, Siew Kum Hong, Xiaxue or Lee Kuan Yew. Referencing atas Greek philosophers will only alienate your readers whilst keeping it very local, using references they will be familiar with will draw them in. Avoid anything too highbrow - the article is to inform, not a platform for the author's ego.

So if someone is trying to do something maverick, I may describe his actions as 'going off-piste'. I wouldn't think twice about using a skiing reference like that - certainly even if you don't personally ski, many of you would have heard about Michael Schumacher's terrible skiing accident in December 2013 which happened when he went skiing off-piste. It essentially refers to venturing off the marked ski routes and skiing down unpatrolled, ungroomed and unmarked slopes - it is an activity that only expert skiers/snowboarders should attempt. However, if I were to write for a very local Singaporean audience, I would not use a skiing reference and instead use the phrase, "venturing off the marked paths at MacRitchie Reservoir Park". A bit more wordy but it still conveys the same sentiment in a very Singaporean context.

4. Using pictures and videos to break up the wall of text: this is something I do in all my blog posts, as a rule, I insert a picture or video every two or three paragraphs to break up the wall of text. This is vital for people who are simply not used to picking up a 300 page novel and getting through 300 pages of "walls of text". Again, think about how there are so many graphics, photos and illustrations in children's books and how they seem to disappear altogether in novels for adults - let's not reinvent the wheel here.

5. Apply the same academic rigour and high standards: a simplified version of a story doesn't have to be a bad story as long as the same high standards are uniformly applied! Imagine how you would feel if you picked up your child's/nephew's/niece's primary school text book and spotted a factual error - would you accept "this was written by a child for a child" as an explanation for that error? It doesn't matter whether you're writing for children, people who speak English as a second/foreign language or people who are just not very educated - they deserve a high standard of journalism and you can customize an article for them whilst ensuring that it is well written, in simple English. 

Where does this leave us then?

I think there is a simple compromise to be reached! Good grief, there are so many people who are making me out to be worse than the PAP, on trying to censor the voices of 'real Singaporeans' - nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, I simply want to see the admin team at TRS function more like editors rather than just a bunch of guys who do little more than cut & paste articles from various places onto the TRS website. In any case, an editor is there to help the journalist, not censor or hinder the journalist. Even the best journalists in the world's most famous newspapers are subject to this kind of scrutiny by their editors who will make doubly sure that mistakes are not allowed to slip through the net and that is how they maintain their high standards.

Let me share with you a story from my time at university - I remember the first essay assignment I was given to write at university and I had missed the briefing where they explained what the standard format was. When I saw the title of the essay, I thought yeah this is easy, I can write about this - so I sat down and churned out 5000 words of what I knew about the topic in a format that was unacceptable. My tutor could have easily failed me for that assignment - but she was nice about it, she took me aside and spent a few minutes explaining to me where I had gone wrong and what I had to do to fix it. After her pep talk, I rewrote the essay and got an A grade for it.

My tutor could have easily failed me - instead she helped me.

Now I was very grateful for the gracious way my kind tutor had handled the situation - now how would you feel if the tutor not only failed me for the essay, but then published it on the university's website to show everyone what I wrote just because that was 'authentic' or 'honest'. If that happened, I would feel that I was punished for having written a bad essay and it would have been embarrassing to be subjected to that kind of treatment. The fact is, my tutor gave me the help I needed to improve the quality of my essay and it was still my writing at the end of the day - it was not 'censored' by my tutor, she merely gave my helpful pointers as to where improvements and corrections had to be made and what I needed to do to get that A grade for that essay. It was still my essay at the end of the day.

Isn't it rather condescending to just assume that these writers who submit to their writing to TRS cannot and will not ever improve their writing style? This this desire for 'authenticity' simply a red herring preventing them from exercising some editorial control when it comes to the quality of the articles? Now, how can this be executed in practice? Once again, I am prepared to be helpful and constructive! I have a few very practical suggestions for you.

1. When the editorial team receives an poorly written piece (about a very interesting subject) that has some potential and could do with some revisions, then the editor could work with the writer to improve the quality of the piece without compromising on capturing the authentic 'voice' of the writer. For example, if the writer mentions an incident as a case study without supplying the vital facts (who, what, when, how, why), the editor could either ask the writer to supply more details to make the case study more robust and convincing. If the writer is unable to do so, then the editorial team could help with the research process and ideally, teach the writer how this process should be done.

2. The editorial should limit their role to making helpful suggestions rather than dictating what revisions the writer must make to improve the piece so as not to influence the content of the piece.

3. The fact is many of these writers have not even had the opportunity to write an essay at university, never mind actually work with a professional editor for paid journalism work and that given the opportunity, many of these writers can actually benefit greatly from the help a good editor can give and with just a few simple pointers (the same way my tutor at university spoke to me for no more than ten minutes), vast improvements can be made easily. I didn't know what my errors were until my university tutor explained them to me, likewise many of these writers don't even realize where they may have made mistakes and may actually appreciate feedback from an editor. Learning how to present your case persuasively and convincingly in writing is an extremely useful skill to have! These writers can then take these useful writing skills and apply them in other areas of their lives -  instead of keeping them authentically inarticulate, why not help them instead by teaching them such a very useful skill?

Many of us will value constructive feedback and enjoy working with an editor.

4. It should be explained clearly to all involved that the purpose of the editorial process is to improve the quality of the stories, help the writers rather than censor the writers. Helping the writer is very different from censoring the writer: censoring means telling the writer, "you can't write that, you can't say this." Helping the writer is quite different, "I know this is what you're trying to express here, this is indeed a very relevant and important point you're making, but can you elaborate on it please, providing more useful details, so that it can be clearer to the reader?"

5. It also works the other way! If indeed you receive a piece from a blogger like me that you wish to make more accessible to a wider audience, then feel free to work with me to produce a 'Singaporean simple English' version of the article. I would be more than happy to make the necessary revisions to suit the audience - after all, I am not that fussed about being 100% unedited and authentic, oh please. I am not some diva who will get upset the moment an editor makes some revisions to my article, it's no big deal. Rather, I do see the value in making articles far more accessible and pleasurable to read for a wider audience especially in the age of social media.

How can my writing reach a wider audience on social media?

The bottom line is that I think the TRS editorial team is sacrificing way too much in terms of trying to be 100% authentic - think about it. With a more active editorial team working with and helping your writers, the result can be a vast overall improvement in the quality of your writing (including producing a steady stream of very high quality 'Singaporean simple English' articles specifically targeting those less educated Singaporeans).  It is a win-win-win situation: the reputation of your website improves greatly, your writers receive constructive feedback to improve their writing skills and most of all, your readers have a far more pleasant experience when visiting your website.

The reality of course is that, by their own admission, "No harm sharing with you that we are in dire need of manpower too. our volunteers come and go quickly and we are constantly in shortage of people helping to moderate our Facebook, website and such." So what I am suggesting is not possible at the moment given their manpower shortage - so perhaps their problem is caused not so much by a misguided quest for 100% authenticity, but rather, a serious lack of reliable volunteers to function as editors. So until they get more volunteers on board, any talk of a more proactive editorial team for them is not practical. I do understand the constraints they are facing.

The TRS team is lacking in manpower at the moment.

I'd like to end by dealing with the haters who have been attacking me, some of the comments left on the TRS website have been telling me to fuck right off, if I don't like what I read on the TRS website, fuck off and go to read another website but stop telling TRS what to do. There are so many bad websites out there, why am I singling TRS out and criticizing them? Allow me to respond to this:

1.  I actually know some of the people at the TRS and I know they appreciate constructive feedback to improve their website. They know that their website isn't perfect and they do genuinely want to improve the user experience of their website - so rather than becoming defensive in the face of criticism, they have actually been very forthcoming in listening to what I have to say. If I didn't think that I was in any kind of position to influence them, I wouldn't have bothered - but the fact that they have been so engaging has proven me right. 
2. I am part of the alternative media community in Singapore and we all have a united goal in providing a credible alternative to the very pro-PAP SPH machine - thus there is a mutual understanding that whilst we may not always agree on all issues, we are ultimately on the same side and can work together. 
3. The people at TRS understand that I am not proposing censorship but simply trying to raise the editorial standards at TRS and improve their readers' experience - this is the kind of help a friend offers and whilst my criticisms are harsh, this is the kind of harsh criticism that two friends can give each other. I would not be as blunt if I didn't actually know some of the people at TRS personally. 
4. Despite what some of their readers may think, the admin team at TRS know the difference between an attack on their editorial approach and an attack on them per se - I have made a grave criticism on their editorial approach, but they also suffer far more attacks from those who feel that they have no right to exist at all in the first place, that they should be shut down and that journalism should be left to the SPH. The team at TRS know who is an enemy and who is a friend - and I am clearly a friend, not an enemy. 
5. Frankly I couldn't give a fuck what their readers think about what I have to say, I can't please everyone, but the least I can do is offer my friends at TRS some constructive feedback. 

Let's not play the blame game here.

So there you go. I hope I've explained my stance on this issue clearly. I come in the spirit of being constructive and helpful - even if my words may be rather strong at times. As always dear readers, please let me know your thoughts on the issue - that is what the comments section below is for. Many thanks for reading.