KUALA LUMPUR: The ongoing changes to the Media Prima/New Straits Times Press (NSTP) group following the new leadership in Umno will likely see the return of the Malay Mail (MM) to its fold.
Sources say moves are afoot for Media Prima/NSTP to buy out Datuk Ibrahim Mohd Nor’s 50% interest in MM. The other 50% is held by Gabungan Kesturi Sdn Bhd, the holding company of Media Prima.
NSTP had early last year sold its 100% interest in MM for RM5 million to Dynahall (M) Sdn Bhd. Dynahall is owned equally by Ibrahim and Gabungan Kesturi.
The sources say Ibrahim, who co-owns Blu Inc magazine publishing group which publishes lifestyle magazines such as Her World, Female, Nuyou and Glam, will not be averse to selling MM back to the Media Prima/NSTP group.
They say Ibrahim, who was the head of circulation in NSTP in the early 1990s, had stepped in to buy MM only because NSTP was going to close the struggling 112-year-old afternoon tabloid.
“He did it because he has a great attachment to The Malay Mail brand and did not want it to die,” says a source. “But if they now want it back and will keep it going, he will be willing to sell it back to them.”
Since the middle of last year, MM has been under the management of Ibrahim and a new team of editors. They have also moved out of Balai Berita, the head office of NSTP.
Sources say the new people now in charge at Media Prima and NSTP want to reverse certain decisions made during the leadership of Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
A former top editor of the NSTP is set to return to the Umno-linked newspaper group, as the new party president Datuk Seri Najib Razak continues with moves to put his trusted people in key media posts.
Sources say Datuk Ahmad Talib will be appointed group editorial adviser and will have effective control over all newsroom matters in NSTP, which publishes the New Straits Times (NST), Berita Harian and Harian Metro.
Ahmad last served as NSTP group editor (the No 2 editorial post) but left in 2005 under a voluntary separation scheme shortly after Tun Abdullah took over as Umno president and put his own people in charge.
Sources say current NSTP group editor-in-chief Datuk Hishamuddin Aun, an Abdullah appointee, will report to Ahmad, who had a few weeks ago started a weekly column in the NST. His impending appointment will follow that of Datuk Johan Jaffar as executive chairman of Media Prima Bhd, the parent company of NSTP.
The sources say it now looks clear that Johan and Ahmad will be Najib’s point men in the Media Prima/NSTP group. Media Prima also owns all of Malaysia’s private free-to-air TV station TV3. Umno’s control of Media Prima/NSTP is through a nominee company. The party also controls the Malay language newspaper group Utusan Malaysia through a direct stake of nearly 50%. So far there has been no indication of changes at Utusan.
Johan was editor-in-chief at Utusan until he was removed by then Umno president Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad a few months before the latter sacked his deputy Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in September 1998. Johan was at the time deemed as an Anwar supporter. Now more than 10 years later, he has re-emerged as a confidant of Najib.
A former Bernama journalist, Ahmad had served in the NSTP group since the early 1980s starting as a reporter in Business Times before rising rapidly to be editor of Berita Harian and then group editor. After leaving Balai Berita in 2005, he worked for two years at telco Maxis Communications as adviser to then CEO Datuk Jamaluddin Ibrahim. Ahmad is seen as a Mahathir loyalist in the media and is a prodigy of former NSTP group editor-in-chief Datuk A Kadir Jasin.
Sources say Ahmad’s return to NSTP could see him taking back several top news executives close to him who left together with him after Mahathir retired. They say there is a plan to reinstate Ahiruddin Atan as editor of MM once the paper returns to NSTP control. After leaving NSTP in 2005, Ahiruddin, who is popularly known as “Rocky”, started a political blog that was critical of Abdullah’s leadership of Umno and the government and had openly campaigned to oust him.