About Singapore Press Holdings

  • Singapore Press Holdings Limited (SPH) (Chinese: 新加坡报业控股) is a media organization in Singapore with businesses in print, Internet and new media, television and radio, outdoor media, and property.
  • Like all newspaper companies in Singapore, SPH is regulated by the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act of 1974 and issues both management and ordinary shares. As specified by the act all issues and transfers of management shares have to be approved by the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, and in “any resolution relating to the appointment or dismissal of a director or any member of the staff” the vote of one management share is equivalent to 200 ordinary shares.
  • There are close ties between the directors of SPH and the Singapore Government. S. R. Nathan, Director of the Security and Intelligence Division and later President of Singapore served as SPH’s Executive Chairman from 1982 to 1988 and the first President (1994–2002) of SPH was Tjong Yik Min, former chief of the Internal Security Department. The immediate former Chairman of SPH, Tony Tan was Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore from 1994 to 2005 and President of Singapore from 2011–present.
  • Dr Lee Boon Yang, currently a director, will become the next chairman of Singapore Press Holdings if he is re-elected in the December 2011 AGM.

Lianhe Zaobao

  • Lianhe Zaobao is the largest Singapore-based Chinese-language newspaper with a daily circulation of about 176,000 Published by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), it was formed on March 16, 1983 as a result of a merger between Nanyang Siang Pau and Sin Chew Jit Poh, two of Singapore’s oldest Chinese newspapers.
  • The paper establishes itself as a serious broadsheet with extensive local news coverage while international news tend to be largely centered on the East Asia region. especially China. It is SPH’s flagship Chinese daily, the only Chinese-language morning daily in Singapore.

Wanbao & Xinmin Daily

  • Although it is named Lianhe Wanbao and is also owned by SPH, the paper bears little resemblance with its more serious broadsheet counterpart Lianhe Zaobao and is not to be mistaken as the aforementioned evening edition.
  • Lianhe Wanbao focuses mainly on local and entertainment news with minimal international coverage. As such it is in competition with another SPH paper Shin Min Daily News. Amongst Singapore readers, Lianhe Wanbao is often regarded more of a tabloid published in broadsheet form, and the veracity of some reports (mostly reproduced from tabloids or gossip magazines from Hong Kong or Taiwan) is sometimes questioned.

  • Shin Min Daily News (Chinese: 新明日报) is a Singapore Chinese-language afternoon newspaper currently published by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH). First started on March 18, 1967, by Singapore businessman Liang Renzhi (梁润之) and the renowned Hong Kong writer Louis Cha as an offshoot of Hong Kong’s Ming Pao, it featured exclusive serializations of some of Cha’s wuxia novels in its early days. In the early 1980s, Cha sold his shares in the paper after the Singapore government ruled that foreigners could only hold up to 3% of shares in locally-based papers.
  • It is now a tabloid-style paper focused on entertainment and local news. As a paper Shin Min Daily News is in competition with the Lianhe Wanbao, which is also published by the SPH. Both papers are now more of tabloids which cover news with sensationalist headlines, although they are still published as broadsheets.