TR Emeritus (TRE, formerly Temasek Review Emeritus) is a socio-political

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

and one of the alternative media that emerged in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

in the 2000s. While Malaysian newspaper ''

The Star ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

'' recognised it to have Opposition sympathies, according to SPH-owned ''

The New Paper ''The New Paper'' is a Singaporean newspaper in tabloid form. It was originally published as a "noon paper", but since 2016 has been published daily as a freesheet in the morning from 7 a.m. onwards. History First launched on 26 July 1988, ...

'', "News website Temasek Review has earned a reputation for its sharply critical views of the Government," and the

Jakarta Globe The ''Jakarta Globe'' is a daily online English-language newspaper in Indonesia, launched in November 2008. The paper initially came out as a print newspaper with an average of 48 pages a day, and published Monday to Saturday. It had three sect ...

described the Temasek Review as "one of Singapore’s few independent web sites".

Changes of name

It was founded in 2004 as Wayang Party, and renamed Temasek Review in 2009, using an old name for Singapore. In late 2010, it was involved in a dispute with government-linked corporation

Temasek Holdings Temasek Holdings (Private) Limited, or simply Temasek, is a Singaporean state holding company owned by the Government of Singapore. Incorporated on 25 June 1974, Temasek owns and manages a total of US$496.59 billion (S$671 billion) in assets u ...

over its name. Temasek Holdings argued that ''Temasek Review'' had been used as the name of the company's annual report since 2004 and that the Javanese word

Temasek Temasek (also spelt Temasik) is an early recorded name of a settlement on the site of modern Singapore. The name appears in early Malay and Javanese literature, and it is also recorded in Yuan and Ming Chinese documents as ''Danmaxi'' ( or ). ...

was "indisputably associated with Temasek oldings and that the website "was just trying to capitalise on the goodwill and reputation" linked to it. The website was renamed Temasek Review Emeritus on 25 May 2011. After a period offline, it was relaunched as TR Emeritus in December of that year. The shortened name was chosen to avoid trademark complications with Temasek Holdings.

Closure and relaunch in 2011

Facing restrictions in both income and contributors, and unable to upgrade hardware to cope with increasing demand, the site's editor Amanda Tan announced on 7 April 2011 that it would close in July. She acknowledged the existence of pressure from the Government, but said that its effects were minimal and there had been no direct official request to close. Ang Peng Hwa, professor of journalism at

Nanyang Technological University The Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is a national research university in Singapore. It is the second oldest autonomous university in the country and is considered as one of the most prestigious universities in the world by various inte ...

, described the closure as "definitely a loss for the blogsphere and also for critical discourse in Singapore". In late April 2011, Temasek Review complained that it had been hit with a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack during the height of the 2011 general elections campaign coverage. Another online site, The Online Citizen, made a similar announcement. Temasek Review was recorded by Experian Hitwise as receiving a significant proportion of internet traffic from search engines during the campaign. In August 2011, Tan announced that the website had gained additional financial support and that the team behind it intended to keep it running for at least five years. She also pledged "to improve and try to balance the articles on our site to cater to readers from all camps," aiming to be "by Singaporeans for Singaporeans". Temasek Review Emeritus was taken offline without explanation on 5 September 2011. It returned as TR Emeritus on 18 December 2011 with a new banner describing the site as ''TR Emeritus: The Voice of Singaporeans for Singapore''.

References

External links

* http://www.tremeritus.com/ * {{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101017043513/http://www.temasekreview.com/ , date=17 October 2010 , title=The Temasek Review Non-profit organisations based in Singapore Asian political websites Politics of Singapore Singaporean websites