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

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

and one of the alternative media that emerged in

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

in the 2000s. While Malaysian newspaper '' The Star'' recognised it to have Opposition sympathies, according to SPH-owned ''

The New Paper ''The New Paper'' is a Singaporean newspaper. It was originally published in tabloid format as a "noon paper", then from 2016 as a freesheet in the morning from 7 a.m. onwards. In December 2021 the paper went to digital only. History Firs ...

'', "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 ( ) is a Singaporean State ownership, state-owned multinational investment firm. Incorporated on 25 June 1974, Temasek has a net portfolio of US$288 billion (S$389 billion) as of 2024. Headquartered at Orchard ...

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 ( or , also spelt Temasik or Tumasik) 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 ...

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 Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is a public research university in Singapore. Founded in 1981, it is also the second oldest autonomous university in the country. The university is organised across numerous colleges and schools, includi ...

, 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 In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyberattack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host conne ...

(DDOS) attack during the height of the 2011 general elections campaign coverage. Another online site,

The Online Citizen The Online Citizen is a blogging platform based in Taiwan. Founded in December 2006 by Andrew Loh and Remy Choo Zheng Xi in Singapore, it is known for its political activism. It describes itself as a group of advocacy journalists who report on t ...

, made a similar announcement. Temasek Review was recorded by Experian

Hitwise Hitwise is a division of Connexity, that measures behavior across desktop, tablet and smartphone devices. The service provides data on trends in visitor and search behavior, visitor and website profiling and measures website market share. I ...

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