Interview

Telum Talks To... Suhaimi Sulaiman, Chairman, BERNAMA

By Nuraaina Asri

We had the privilege of speaking with Suhaimi Sulaiman, the Chairman of BERNAMA on the national news agency’s direction following his appointment and  BERNAMA’s shifts and initiatives in meeting news demands.

Key takeaways:
 
  • BERNAMA’s new envisioned direction includes becoming a thought leadership-driven news agency. BERNAMA aims to catalyse thinking culture among its target audience through their news, further sparking discussions that matter among the consumers. Data driven journalism and wisdom journalism are anticipated to realise the vision across BERNAMA’s entities.

    “Two days after I was made the Chairman, we actually came up with something like a tagline that says that we need to be the number one news brand when it comes to thought leadership. We have to be reliable, relatable and also credible”
     
  • BERNAMA adapts to the current COVID-19 via content production, important discourses and live announcements. BERNAMA’s editorial workforce finds opportunities throughout the crisis and leverage on it to deliver more quality reporting.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

    “At the end of the day, it’s about being accurate, being fast and be responsible in your messaging.”
     
  • Collaboration journalism is key in ensuring BERNAMA's consistency in playing its role as one of main information sources for other publications in the country.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

    “Together with the Editor-in-Chief, Datuk Mokhtar, we said, “Okay, let’s find great people who can be some sort of like a resident expert for us.”
     
  • There are few factors that should be taken into consideration in editorial operations nowadays - understanding your market and audience segment, solid storytelling skills, understanding clickbait and SEO skills, to name a few.

    So based on this challenging time, we all need to change to acquire new knowledge, so that we don’t just tell great stories but we know the strategy of putting what stories at which platform, what can be curated, what would be the suitable approach in dealing with certain audience.”

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Telum Media

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Journalists
Suhaimi Sulaiman

Director General of Broadcasting

Media
BERNAMA

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