Say hello to the new Malay Mail

Were you Malay Mail readers welcomed by this new masthead today?



Just got back from the launch (or re-launch) of the Malay Mail - that well-loved tabloid with a 112-year history.

As background, in case you haven't heard, earlier this year, The Malay Mail was sold to publisher BluInc by the Media Prima Group. Tonight's event is the the second time the paper is reinventing itself in the space of two years, but I'm glad to report that under the hood, it's the same, familiar faces (with new notable additions) pushing the paper along.

The big change: The Malay Mail is going back to becoming that afternoon paper we all know and love. The key operating word being afternoon.

Getting to the venue, I was pretty impressed with the setup - a corridor muraled by previous editions of The Malay Mail. Sort of a mini-history lesson for me.



And the hall was packed with people:



But getting to the content of the evening, the person sitting next to me could not help but mention to me: "Why is Mr. Ibrahim mentioning "bloggers" and "internet" so much in his speech?" Actually, I couldn't help but notice that too. In my humble opinion, that's a good thing.

I sorta picked up that Mr. Ibrahim also talked about how The Malay Mail's heritage as an afternoon paper meant they were delivering people more current news than the rest of the market (remember reading yesterday's World Cup results off The Malay Mail because The Star didn't have any?) According to the man, The Malay Mail's emphasis on its online site to deliver current news was going to mirror this role it used to serve.

Flipping through the actual printed paper, the changes are quite apparent. There are quite a number of new columns - one even covers the blogosphere - from fairly opinionated people (I think I spied Amir Muhammad on the list). My favourite section - the complaints section - is back with two full pages. What's The Malay Mail, after all, without customer complaints?

Overall, I'm going to have to say that I'm slightly disappointed with the lack of lifestyle pages. Still, the focus on commentary and news is certainly welcome - if the paper can deliver on Mr. Ibrahim's promise to give us the "alternative opinion / viewpoint" that Malaysian readers today crave.

On a totally un-related matter, I also realised at the event that if you stick a huge enough logo anywhere, you can get people to camwhore in front of your logo. I'm just wondering if this is an idea that could be turned to a stunt:



On another TOTALLY unrelated matter, did I mention that the SWAG bag was stuffed with goodies. I think it puts some of us PR people to shame the sort of SWAG we give out. Here, have a look -the silver box is a 1GB USB drive: