The Edge Bites Back?

Many of you would share my views on The Edge. It has lost its direction and relevance as "the" business paper that matters. I used to buy The Edge religiously but as the paper lost more and more capable writers and relied more and more on syndicated columns, it became dull and uninspiring. It was so obvious the paper was too keen to bulk up on how to make money, hence the special pullouts and the not so relevant Options. The opinion columns was getting off topic, many too centered on issues that were too intellectual or too macro to be a concern for the majority of readers.

Some of the columns reserved for in house writers were totally unnecessary and irrelevant, the printed page that tries to say something but ending up with nothing insightful.

Lately, I have gravitated back to The Edge cause they got Leslie Lopez to helm it. At least I know this guy will do some things differently. Let's look at the last week's issue:
- Dijaya ties up with Mah Sing (good cover and good story)
- Scomi shareholders feud (good insight into why they are fighting)
- Bright spots in property counters (this is so-so, not punchy enough)
- New power tenders (this is good stuff even though most wouldn't bother to read this)
- MAHB new fund raising (good and insightful)
- Clarity on AirAsiaX's IPO (important enough, more drill down please)
- Honda/Proton (could have been a better scoop if more investigative work was done on why Honda was "forced" to switch, and where was Oriental's story in this)
- Premier Naflin (hmmm, too restrained, its a political story more than a biz story, maybe no license to write more)
- WCT (ok, but WCt seems to be too much in the news anyways, just because some writer knows so-and-so better does not mean we have to hear about the every other week)
- Gadang (ok story, more concerns should be on funding side)
- TMC (great story and how the company repositioned)
- AEON Carrefour (this needs a bigger write up)

We don't mind reading regional stories. I also appreciate that The Edge Singapore is a natural feeder system for some pages as well, thats fine, but for Malaysians we are only concerned about the top 30 Singapore stocks, anything smaller I'd have to read The Edge Singapore, not for the Malaysian version.

Leslie, you are on the right track. Each week should have at least 10-15 local stories on companies but judging from the coverage now you are leveraging on your ties and network of GLCs and GLC-linked companies. You need a senior writer or two to look at current stocks like JCY, Benelac, Century Logistics, Hovid, Bright Packaging ...

Now back to buying The Edge for me. Good luck Leslie.