How to Build Independent Media That Lasts: The Story of Malaysiakini

My journalistic journey through Malaysia would be incomplete without writing about Malaysiakini, the highly regarded daily online news publication. I spoke with Premesh Chandran, one of the co-founders, who launched the outlet alongside Steven Gan in 1999. I had first met Steven during an East-West Center fellowship in 2023, in the middle of the pandemic, when our only connection was through a Zoom screen. It was then that I came to know more about Malaysiakini and its powerful journalism of courage.

More recently, Malaysiakini co-hosted one of the world’s largest investigative journalism conferences, drawing journalists from across the globe and demonstrating the power of reporting in the Global South – work too often overlooked amid the global media’s fixation on Pulitzer-winning institutions in the North.

What I encountered was not only a story of courage, but of innovation, resilience and – above all – legacy.

The birth of Malaysiakini at a time of rupture

The 1990s were a time of rapid change and political upheaval in Asia more broadly and in Malaysia more specifically. In 1997, the Asian financial crisis – an economic downturn – led to a rapid devaluation of currencies.

In 1998, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad dismissed and jailed his deputy, Anwar Ibrahim. The episode triggered mass protests. Tens of thousands took to the streets in support of Anwar, whose Reformasi movement drew significant backing from Malay Muslims, the largest group in Malaysia’s multicultural society. Over time, Reformasi expanded to advocate democracy and social justice – posing a sustained challenge to the country’s long-ruling political order.

Chandran and Gan were student activists in Australia – shaped by a generation of protest movements across Asia – Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Nepal – as well as global moments like the Gulf War and the Iraq War. Neither came from a traditional journalism background. One studied physics;  the other architecture.

“We were not academically trained in journalism,” Chandran said. “But we practised writing. We produced magazines during our student days.”  And they wanted to bring democratic change.

What worked in their favour, Chandran explained, was that Malaysia was not as repressive as China or Vietnam. There was rule of law, however uneven. Arrests were possible; pressure was constant. But space existed. “We were not a country where people disappeared overnight,” he said.

Setting it up: beginnings in a cyber café

Nonetheless, it was difficult terrain to navigate. Malaysia’s media system, Chandran explained, was built for control: print newspapers and television stations required licenses that could be revoked at any time; ownership was concentrated among political parties and their allies; and editors practised self-censorship not as ideology, but as survival.

The internet offered a loophole – not because it was free, but because regulators had not yet learned how to contain it. But there were challenges: the infrastructure was minimal; internet access was costly; computers were expensive; and online payments did not yet exist.

As a journalist in Delhi, I remember the struggle of getting online in cyber cafés – now relics of another era – where you paid by the hour to use a single networked computer.

Malaysiakini operated out of one because it was the only practical way to get online. The founders even imagined that running a cyber café could subsidise their journalism while giving them access to the necessary infrastructure. But before Malaysiakini could fully launch, the café was losing money, and they were forced to sell it.

Later that year, they managed to raise additional funds and formally launched Malaysiakini.

At the time, newspapers relied almost entirely on advertising. Subscription-based digital journalism was virtually unheard of. Even if readers wanted to pay, the systems simply did not exist: no credit cards, no online banking, no digital wallets.

And yet Malaysiakini would go on to build one of Southeast Asia’s earliest reader-funded journalism models. It offered something radically different – daily independent reporting, which meant daily accountability.

Funding model: choosing journalism over advertising

Like most publications, Malaysiakini initially assumed that advertising would support its newsroom. That assumption collapsed quickly.

Because of its political coverage – investigative, critical, persistent – advertisers grew wary. Holding power to account was not “brand safe,” Chandran explained.

“We thought we would do advertising,” he said. “But because of the political nature of our coverage, advertisers were not so encouraging.”

Many of us as journalists recognise this dilemma. I have seen it in both the United States and India, the two countries where I have worked. Advertisers exert pressure to soften coverage; in India, government advertising itself is often used as leverage, quietly withdrawn from publications that are deemed too critical.

Malaysiakini faced an early choice: dilute the journalism – or abandon advertising.

Chandran described the improvisation that followed. Readers mailed checks. Some paid in cash, in person. At one point, Malaysiakini even sold physical scratch cards with access codes printed on the back, which readers could enter online.

“We had to be very creative,” he said. “Those were the early days of the internet.”

Legacy: activism, objectivity and daily accountability

One of the most striking moments in our conversation came when I asked Chandran about activism and objectivity. What is journalism? What is activism? And do the two ever converge?

Chandran said it is not so simple. In societies with a free press, it is easier to separate journalism from activism. But in countries where press freedom is constrained, he argued, journalists must adopt what he called “an activist mindset.” Journalists must be ready to be jailed, ready to organise readers, ready to defend the right to practice journalism.

You still do the journalism. But the activism is not about ideology — it is about self-defence. “Activism is not so much doing demonstrations that can change things,” he said, “but being able to defend the work that you do.”

And this is what Malaysiakini has done: defending journalists while doing objective, independent reporting. Over the years, they have built what Chandran calls daily accountability journalism. It’s not just about one expose, but a relentless questioning of official narratives and pushing for accountability.

“Corruption among judiciary, corruption of  political elite… it's been story after story.  I don't think of any one big story. I think it's kind of consistent daily…challenging  the narrative of the government.”

Over time, this consistency reshaped expectations – not just among readers, but across the entire media ecosystem.

And that is the deeper legacy of Malaysiakini: it did not simply report on power. It helped reset the conditions under which power could be reported at all.

Present day: independence in a time of misinformation

Today, Malaysia’s media environment looks radically different from the late 1990s. Independent or semi-independent outlets dominate. Even partisan media must compete in an environment where credibility matters.

If a publication simply reports what the government wants, no one will read it. “It has shifted 180 degrees.” Most media in Malaysia are now independent, or at least relatively so. They may have agendas, but they operate in an arena where independence and accountability are essential.

Yet new challenges remain. Misinformation spreads everywhere, and in the era of social media, attention spans are collapsing.

Looking to the future, Chandran, now retired, is pragmatic: “It’s not our mission to clean up social networks,” he said. The focus of Malaysiakini remains what it always was — not chasing virality, but building an institution.

For those of us – from the US and elsewhere – watching independent media erode, Malaysiakini offers a rare lesson: journalism can outlast pressure if it is built deliberately, defended relentlessly, and funded by readers who believe in it. Not because power disappears, but because someone is willing to face it, every single day.

Travelling with fellow journalists like Chandran is also a sacred path I’m walking – a journey through courage, conviction, and the enduring power of story.

Kalpana Jain is a journalist and author.

This article was originally published on the author's Substack.

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