Review: The Malaysian Insider - A Year In The Life Of A Country

I am a passionate reader of news that comes from online portals. As an aspiring journalist I know it is essential to cross-check information, especially from online sources. Even so, The Malaysian Insider remains my favourite source of breaking news and views. I picked up a book published by the news portal as I was browsing idly through a bookstore a few months back (I think it was newly released, I still can't get an image of the book).

Titled “The Malaysian Insider – A year in the life of a country”, the book is a collection of articles by columnists from The Malaysian Insider from late February 2008 to early February 2009. Columnists such as John Lee, Baradan Kuppusamy and Nur Jazlan Mohamed had their views on various issues surrounding Malaysian ground published in this book.

Editor Leslie Lau, who is also a columnist with The Malaysian Insider, addressed the question I had in mind when I first picked up the book from the shelves: why does an Internet news portal have to publish a book when they can just leave the information online? Lau says that reasons are aplenty for the book’s existence, but he also stresses that it does not matter where they release the information, rather the most vital thing is the ideas disseminated.

I must say I liked this book very much, as the various ideas and views embedded in each article served to help me form my own opinion of happenings in Malaysia. The Malaysian Insider has done well to publish such a book as it archives these interesting opinions into one hard copy, which has a wide potential reach to Malaysians across the nation.

I personally enjoyed the following articles immensely:  

1. The Umno Curse Strikes Again by Nur Jazlan Mohamed
2. Thank you Prime Minister for Small Government! by Hafiz Noor Shams 
3. New Media May Rock, The Message Rules by The Malaysian Insider 
4. Head in The Sand Syndrome by James Chin 
5. Flip Flops Made Abdullah A Flop by Baradan Kuppusamy 
6. Talkin’ ‘bout My Generation by John Lee

Although I did find some of the published articles rather tedious to digest, the overall structure of the written works were good. Assuring a riveting read for even the most politically uninfluenced Malaysian, the book is bound to make readers laugh and at the same time kick their brains into gear to look forward at Malaysia’s future.