Singapore Independent Media Fair – Sudhir Vadaketh
Do we still need traditional publishing houses? An irrelevant issue for one of the organisers of Singapore’s recently held Independent Media Fair. Sudhir Vadaketh, is a Co-founder and Chief Editor of the digital magazine Jom. TAB caught up with him at the event organized by NIMBUS ( Network of Independent Media for Better Understanding and Support)
SV: One of the aims of Nimbus is to create space for a much more expansionary broad view of the media. And I think all of us who work in the media recognize that the media today is very different from the media of 20 or 30 years ago. So to answer the question, which publishers attended the event… traditional publishers, maybe not, but new media publishers, sure, there were plenty of people who I think would call themselves new media publishers. They might have an Instagram channel, they might have a YouTube channel, they might have a Facebook page, they might have a website. And that’s a new conception of media and publishing, which I think, increasingly, we’re all very aware of.
TAB: So, whom should we be looking out for now?
SV: Singapore Unbound is the New York based organization and they’ve got a press cell, Gaudy Boy Press. They are publishers midway between a traditional and a new media publisher. Gaudy Boy Press publishes hard copy books.
There’s a group called Lepak Conversations, which focuses on Malay Muslim affairs in Singapore. So for example, they are running a male mental health workshop. They put a lot of content out online. In the past year, they’ve been fairly active in terms of the Israel -Palestine issue. They are what I would consider a new media publisher. And there’s another group called Workers Make Possible, which is a worker’s rights group. And they also publish a lot online and particularly through their Instagram page.
TAB: How does your writing as a creative non -fiction writer and a journalist overlap?”
SV: I do not consider Jom a news organization. We are a weekly literary magazine in the mould of the New Yorker. As ambitious as that goal is, that is what we want to do. I do think that there’s a lot of synergies and each helps the other so my book writing suddenly has informed my way of thinking about the world and likewise my weekly journalism also actually helps me in terms of the weekly practice of writing and the weekly practice of everything that goes into being a writer… everything from the artistic element of it but also to the basic things like fact -checking and analytical rigor, a lot of those sorts of things I get from my weekly job. I think the two actually work quite well together.”
The Singapore Independent Media fair was held at The Projector, Cathay Cineleisure Orchard complex, on 20th July 2024
