Kuala Lumpur 30 Nov: Utusan Melayu (M) Bhd for the first time in 80 years of its establishment had exercised the Voluntary Separation Scheme VSS on its staff throughout the country.
Today 800 staff who took the VSS were celebrated in the most sobre atmosphere and yet very touching!
Most of them teared off when they watched the VSS staff expressed their feelings about Utusan and how they loved the company too much.
Digital media technologies have affected the newspaper industry greatly over the past decade.
The evolving technology in the transmission of information has inevitably affected the growth of revenue in the newspaper industry today.
Utusan Melayu Group is not exempted from this phenomenon and today we see the result of the slowly dying process of the once very powerful media for information – the newspaper.
The lost of Barisan Nasional in the 14th General Election on 9th May worsened the financial situation in Utusan.
UMNO being the major share holder in Utusan has not been able to help sustain the financial needs of the aged newspaper Utusan Malaysia.
Utusan Malaysia is the mouthpiece of UMNO the dominant Malay political party in Malaysia.
UMNO was once the powerful party in the BN coalition. After it has lost in the 9May General Election, its mouth piece newspaper has also lost much readership and revenue.
In the early 90’s until 2005 Utusan Malaysia could reach a daily circulation of over 250,000 to 300,000 and its Sunday edition (Mingguan Malaysia) up to 450,000 to 500,000, but today it is difficult to reach such figure.
With that development many media players today even described the global newspaper industry is coming to its edge._Malaysia World News
