(click to watch the video)
I love stories about Malaysia. I love learning about Malaysia and I love writing about Malaysia. Not the big headline-grabbing stories, but stories of everyday people doing things in excellence, with passion, with love. This is the beautiful heart and soul of Malaysia.
When I saw this video on my LinkedIn feed, I was struck with nostalgia. This may be one of the last people who are still doing things traditionally like this. As the old ways of life are swept away by the tides of time, I think it's important to capture these stories for posterity. We should remember and appreciate our past and our heritage. This sense of history helps us understand our national identity and aspirations as a people.
But it's easy to lose sight of what makes our country special when the media bombards us daily with news of people who don't deserve to be in the news.
Here's an idea for the media: why not balance all the sensational, outrageous, tragic, chaotic story angles with inspiring, thought-provoking, down-to-earth, intelligent angles? God knows we can do with a lot less outrage and a lot more positivity. A casual glance at the feeds on any social media platform will tell you there's plenty of market for such stories. In fact, in the coming years, I see that hyper-local media that focus on community stories, especially those with a positive tone, will be a major disrupting force in media. We can see from social media content consumption patterns, the market is already there. Marketers are realising this and are adapting their social media marketing efforts to this reality. But as far as I can see, no one in Malaysia has definitively stepped into this space to claim it. I think it's a huge opportunity, a low hanging fruit just waiting to be plucked.
Like other traditional ways of life, traditional mass media has been dying a long and painful death over the past decade. Maybe it's time to make a paradigm shift instead of trying to change current practices to fit the old paradigm.
What say you?