KUALA LUMPUR, March 16 ― A former editor of The Malaysian Insider, the online news portal shut down by its owner in March last year, said he will debut a new outfit called The Malaysian Insight.
In a report by The Straits Times (ST), Jahabar Sadiq said the portal will go online sometime this month “as a free site before introducing a paywall sometime down the line”.
He refused, however, to disclose the source of his funding.
“It has taken me 10 months to convince some private equity and businessmen to give me a loan of sorts to do this,” Jahabar was quoted as saying in the report.
Jahabar added that the site will focus on politics, followed by civil society movements, issues of race and religion, and domestic economy.
Last year, The Edge Media Group decided to terminate The Malaysian Insider (TMI), some eight years after the news portal was started in 2008.
Jahabar had said The Edge Media Group’s decision to close the news portal was made for commercial reasons.
Putrajaya had previously blocked access to TMI, with Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Dr Salleh Said Keruak alleging that the news portal had caused public “confusion” in an article quoting an unnamed source from a Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission advisory panel.
