by Luz Rimban

HE HAD arrived early that day for his three-to-midnight shift, expecting only good news. After working for a year at the daily Singaporean newsmagazine Project Eyeball, Filipino journalist Bert Tan (not his real name) was finally about to get his appointment papers as its sub-editor, as well as sign a brand-new contract. Touted as Singapore's "first integrated print and cyberspace news magazine," Project Eyeball, owned by the Singapore Press Holdings' (SPH), was barely two years old, but Tan was already drawing a salary that was six times his pay as a writer in Manila, and with a housing allowance to boot.

By the time his shift started, Tan was the paper's newest regular employee. Little did he know that his first day as a bonafide Project Eyeball worker would also be his last.

At four o'clock pm that same day, the editors and publishers of the magazine came down from their offices to announce tearfully that the publication had to be shut down because it wasn't earning and that the initial funding had run out. Press releases would later blame the closure on "severe market conditions."

To soften the blow, a handful of Project Eyeball's more senior staff were given other jobs at sister publication, the daily Straits Times. Tan himself got a generous separation package and a promise that his record would be kept on file for future placement in other SPH companies. But that proved to be cold comfort for the journalist. Tan even says that because he was one of the handful who put the magazine to bed nightly, he felt like he was participating in a surreal tragicomedy as he walked out of the newsroom to go home that gloomy evening last June and literally bid Project Eyeball goodbye.

Five months later, financial troubles would spread to SPH's broadcast arm, SPH MediaWorks, which would lay off 73 employees or almost 20 percent of its 380-strong work force. Company executives said they had to cut costs "in the face of a weak advertising market." By December 2001, those who stayed on at SPH companies were forced to take salary cuts of as much as 12 percent.

This is only one of the big media stories that journalists never get to tell. All over the world this past year, newspapers, radio and television stations, and even online publications have either been closing down or downsizing. Hundreds if not thousands of journalists have been thrown out into the streets after being retrenched or deemed redundant. As Project Eyeball's experience shows, even before the events of September 11, many media organizations have had to throw manpower overboard to stay afloat and ride the tides of recession, a decline in advertising revenues, falling readerships, and high overhead costs.

For newspapers, round-the-clock news from radio, television, and the Internet kept pulling readers away, making it even more difficult for the print media to hang on to their shrinking markets. Not even the supposedly big and stable names were spared the storm. Lay-offs swept the New York Times, the Tribune Co. and the Knight Ridder group of publications in the United States as well as the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom, to name a few.

September 11 only made the situation worse, especially when it came to advertising. The travel industry-airlines and hotels-as well as IT and financial services firms cut back on advertising severely, affecting many of the world's newspapers and magazines. In Hong Kong, all 80 employees of the regional newsmagazine Asiaweek were laid off last November after what Time editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine called a brutal "downturn in advertising." Unable to keep up with its main competitor Far Eastern Economic Review, the 26-year-old Asiaweek had to close along with two other AOL Time Warner Inc magazines, Family Life and On.

Part of the reason for the financial crunch hitting the media world is the fast growth of the industry itself. The number of newspapers, magazines, radio, and television and cable programs as well as online sources of information has multiplied so rapidly in the last few years that it has become harder for a media organization to find—and keep—its niche in the crowded market.

Singapore's Project Eyeball, for instance, was among the many publications that rode on the dotcom boom. It was envisioned to be a magazine about the Internet catering to the yuppie segment. But the dotcom crash sent it searching for another niche. In fact, it was as a political news magazine that Project Eyeball met its end.