The news blog was founded by Andrew Loh, 43, and Choo Zheng Xi in 2006 during
which Mr Loh was working closely with an opposition party – the Workers’ Party.
"You see every day in the media, the Strait Times and Channel News Asia…you see how they reported it. It was all very slanted and one-sided so after the election I decided maybe there was something that we could do about it. We could go and give alternative voice. I came across this thing called blog,” Mr Loh said.
He recalled watching a 30-minute television news report by Channel News Asia one night and over 28 minutes of the programme were devoted to the ruling party – PAP, while all reports about all the opposition parties were crammed into a minute or two.
“I had never blogged at all in my whole life and I hadn’t written anything in my whole life. I started exploring blogging …at that time I was running a business with my brother…a restaurant…I came across a student who had the same idea as me so we got together and started The Online Citizen in December 2006.”
The website prides itself as being responsible and credible for all writers of the site use their real names.
Branded writers of the site as ‘blogivists, The Online Citizen founder states they “will continue to redefine news, through the merger of opinions and reporting – forever blurring the lines between editorial and news. The quasi opinions and veiled ‘viewpoints’ of the mainstream media will be routinely exposed and questioned by The Online Citizen; so that in the end, we will have a better and more inclusive Singapore”, a message on the news blog reads.
Speaking in an interview, Mr Loh cited reports by the news blog which demonstrate how the Online Citizen tells “the stories about Singapore and Singaporeans that aren't being told in the mainstream press”.
The news blog welcomes contributions from anyone who is concerned about Singapore and now has over 4,000 fans on Facebook and has twitter.
Google, Facebook and Yahoo are the main referrers with 64 per cent of the website's audience are from Singapore, 14 per cent from India, 7 per cent from the US and 7 per cent from the UK, according to the news blog.
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