Splice Pink

Jom has been on the Singapore media scene for less than five months. The digital magazine, as its co-founder Sudhir Vadaketh explains, is trying to fill a unique position in explaining Singapore through a critical eye to both local and foreign audiences. Perhaps more interestingly, it's on the scene at a time when government agencies are more open to engaging with small and independent media startups.

Find out more about Jom
https://www.jom.media/

Join as a member
https://www.jom.media/membership/

Connect with Sudhir on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sudhir-thomas-vadaketh-194629/

Anupama Chandrasekaran is an audio documentary producer at Newsreel Asia, based in Chennai. She specialises in sound-rich, character-driven audio stories. Anupama has worked across newsrooms in Mumbai, New York, Hong Kong, and Chennai. We spoke about the opportunities behind audio stories and the challenges of building a documentary business -- and how her work is framed by her experience as an economics teacher.

Connect with Anupama on LinkedIn

Devina Heriyanto is the membership manager at Project Multatuli, a public service journalism collective in Indonesia.

In this Splice Pink episode, we spoke with Devina shortly after we met her at Splice Beta in Chiang Mai in November 2022. She talked us through the intricacies of bringing ‘depressing’ reporting around marginalised peoples to a community that supports Project M’s mission. 

We got a sense of that mission when we asked Devina to describe their core members. “It's people like me,” she replied. “People who have empathy, people who have intellectual curiosity, humility, and [with] solidarity to support this organisation who is doing great things [that don’t] necessarily benefit them personally.”

Have a listen, be inspired — and then sign up.

Hosted by Rishad Patel and Alan Soon. Produced by Alan Soon.

Be a Project Multatuli member

Connect with Devina on LinkedIn

What makes a creator different from a journalist?

On our latest Splice Pink episode, we spoke with Amanda Cua, a newsletter media creator in the Philippines. Her daily email — BackScoop — keeps you updated on the top stories in tech and business in Southeast Asia.

She doesn’t call herself a journalist. “One big focus I have is distribution. And I don’t think that most journalists have that in their job description. How do I get this to more people? What kind of platform should I be using?”

Listen to this episode — it’s full of great insights. But stay for the reveal at the end of it. You wouldn’t guess her age from all this wisdom.

Subscribe to BackScoop

Connect with Amanda on LinkedIn

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Myanmar's media, fleeing the military's crackdown on journalists, have found a new home in Chiang Mai. Over the past year, parts of the media ecosystem — journalists, newsrooms, funders — have re-established their operations the northern Thai city.

The creation of this new hub represents an important milestone for this region. For the first time, we're seeing an ecosystem built around media startups coming together in Southeast Asia.

Splice's co-founder Alan Soon was on a road trip with Sonny Swe, the CEO and founder of Frontier Myanmar. They talked about how Frontier made the move, and what's in store for 2022. This interview was recorded in Sonny's car on a drive from Chiang Rai to Chiang Mai.

More about Frontier Myanmar

Connect with Sonny Swe on LinkedIn

Coconuts just turned 10. The online publisher, which puts out city guides across Bangkok, Manila, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Bali, and Yangon, has been pushing forward into new formats such as broadcast and streaming platforms.

We spoke with Byron Perry, the founder and CEO of Coconuts about the decade of lessons he's had in building one of Asia's most recognizable media startups. They're finally making a profit this year.

We picked his brains about fund raising, branding, expansion strategies, and growing talent.

And Byron, congrats again on becoming a dad. :)

Hosted by Splice's co-founders Rishad Patel and Alan Soon.

A timeline of the decade at Coconuts:
https://coconuts.co/coconuts-turns-10/

Connect with Byron on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/byron-perry-82203b2a/

More about Splice Media:
https://splicemedia.com/

Eugene Kan co-founded MAEKAN in 2016 in Hong Kong after leaving Hypebeast where he was the editorial director. MAEKAN's goal is to celebrate creative culture, and it does that through articles, podcasts, and more recently, an e-commerce store. We talked with Eugene about the changing subculture lifestyle market, and the media and fans who support it.

Check out MAEKAN here

Follow Eugene Kan on Twitter

The School of Splice is coming together! It's everything you need to build a media startup today. It's all audio, and packs insights from all around this wonderful Splice community. Knowledge, network, funding -- all in one place.

The program rolls out next month. Find out more here.
http://schoolofsplice.com/

In this episode, we're talking with Simon Vincent, a journalist-turned-game-developer. Simon is a content strategist at Playlogue, a game development services team based in Singapore. He talks about the lessons he's learned about the transformation of media from what began as a board game.

Find out more about Playlogue.
Connect with Simon on LinkedIn.

Five years in, FactorDaily pivoted to a non-profit entity this year. Its cofounder Pankaj Mishra figured the change would allow him the freedom to stay closer to mission: "To make sense of technology’s impact on the society around us."

"No ads. No paywalls. No venture capital funding," Pankaj proclaims on the website. That means some hard decisions on building new business models in an incredibly tough space.

One more thing: Pankaj has also demolished the traditional news cycle. He and his team will only publish when there's a story.

FactorDaily is the anti-media, and that's why we love it.

Read more about their plans.
 https://factordaily.com/factordaily-again/