50th anniversary

Do you remember the day that The Star newspaper first came out? It was on a Thursday: the ninth of September 1971. That's 50 years ago. And coincidentally, today's again a Thursday, the ninth of September in 2021. Fifty years apart but still sharing the same calendar.

Ah, but that's beside the point. On this day 50 years ago, the first issue of The Star newspaper was printed. I was in Lower Six. I remember walking to the Indian sundry shop some 50 feet from my home to have a look at the newspapers there, as was my habit in those days. I would stand at the sundry shop, look up at the newspapers on display there....Straits Echo, The Malay Mail, New Straits Times.....and there, attached to a rope with a clothes peg was a folded copy of the tabloid-sized The Star. 

Not many newspapers were tabloids in those days. Certainly not New Straits Times or Straits Echo. The Malay Mail was also a broadsheet newspaper but it was later converted into a tabloid. Same with Straits Echo. Facing the heat from The Star, it changed name to The National Echo and transformed into a tabloid newspaper to compete with The Star. The Star's masthead stood out red as compared with The National Echo's blue. There was a short-lived Singapore-based Eastern Sun on the newspaper stands too but I can't remember much about it.

The Star was originally a Penang-based newspaper with a racy Page Three pin-up to attract readers. But then, it was a more liberal time in the 1970s. It first operated from rented premises at 62 Weld Quay. with the late KS Choong as the founder and managing editor. Choong was formerly from The Star, I learnt later.

This picture here was posted up on facebook by Koh Su Chun who was the head of the reporter's desk in Penang in the 1970s. I had known him from my own newspaper days in 1977 when I was still with The National Echo. Imagine, he had kept the very first issue all these years. PS. Someone also posted in facebook that the first issue rolled off the press at 11.45am on that day in 1971.