Your New Source of Independent News

Are you looking for a neutral kind of arguments for the hotly-debated issues in the motherland, and found that those given by mainstream media are either limited or one-sided? Keen to listen to public reviews and open debates on those issues or any other daily occurrence in Malaysia? Or simply looking for a fresh reading material? Then MalaysiaToday is definitely your answer.

Some of you might already be familiar with this site, but for me it is kind of new. I found this site by accident while browsing through the net in search of some additional information on some public-eyed issue in the home country recently when I stumbled upon this blog, and have put it on my list of daily readings ever since. Dubbed as ‘your source of independent news’, at first I found it rather interesting that this site is single-handedly managed by a chap by the name of Raja Petra Kamaruddin. Much later I found out that he has some assistants helping him out. Other details of Raja Petra are still somewhat vague for me, but I learnt that he was once detained under ISA, while some of his previous works are quite prominent albeit a little confusing. Also, the fact that caught me by surprise is that Raja Petra is an old boy of my alma mater, MCKK though he went to Victoria Institution later in his secondary academic stage.

MalaysiaToday is not all about him though; in fact one part of the site deals with the collection of materials from around the blogosphere, where anyone’s article can be there. Now, this is why I told you this is an excellent, if not perfect place to seek for unbiased disputes on national issues. From Raja Petra’s writing, I can also tell that he is not a one-sided observer; most of the time he makes his stand on a certain point clear and the rest, it is up to the readers to judge. The appealing part is always at the end of each article, where the public is given a chance to throw in their opinions, which most of time concludes with raging, albeit controlled disagreements between the commenter. Apart from that, this site also consists of public columns by four independent writers, whose names are anonymous to many but in fact are big names in writing fields, including Raja Petra himself. Two out of four columns are written in Malay language for the record. On a more personal note, I found Hishamuddin Rais’ column on this site as a pleasant replacement to the one he also has in the Off the Edge magazine, which was made as my monthly reading back then in Malaysia. The only difference is that, he writes in English in that magazine.

So brush off the thought of sticking merely to the mainstream media, and instead get yourself updated with current news from the motherland from MalaysiaToday as well from now on. Just click on the image above, and immediately you will be brought to the new realm of independent news.