Niexter's First Anniversary

Today, I would like to blog on an entry commemorating the First Anniversary of Niexter, a newspaper pull-out which was initiated a year or so ago. Just as today’s Niexter issue is centred around this topic, I guess my blog post should be too.

First things first, let me answer a question that might quite possibly be bothering you – What is Niexter? A brief official description of Niexter is as follows:

 “Niexter is a teen lifestyle pullout of the New Straits Times, published every Thursdays. Niexter is put together by teen editorial teams who decide on the content of each week’s issue, contact their peers across the country to assign stories and eventually submit their weekly issue for production.”

Now, that is an official description of Niexter. Let me give my side of the story, and share my personal experiences as I am a return writer of Niexter as well as me sort of ‘religiously’ reading the pullout every Thursdays.

Niexter is basically a ‘by teens, for teens’ pullout. When I first caught the sight of a Niexter paper sometime early last year, I was awed by the awesome talents showcased by each and every one of the young-blooded writers. Back then, I used to think to myself, “I am gonna be writing in there someday.”

Niexter cover dated 14 January 2010

As weeks passed, and then months, the chances of me writing in Niexter looked pretty bleak, for the simple reason that I didn’t take the initiative, and be proactive, in finding out how could I contribute. However, at the same time, one of my friends, Angert, used to write quite regularly. I used to ask him how come he could write in and he said it was because he had gone for the NIE holiday workshops on junior journalism.

Then, things changed mid-July when my school was invited to send a group of students for a creative writing workshop hosted and organised by the NIE department. There, I got in touch with Mr. Francis, to whom I told that I was serious in wanting to write and contribute to Niexter.

But then, for reasons unknown to me – probably due to some complications or misunderstanding of some sort – he did not get back to me. I decided to sit on it until one fine day in September when I said to myself, “If you want to do something, you got to go towards it.”

Therefore, I picked up the phone and called Aunty Mary, who is the NIE Manager. I told her that I was looking at being a part of Niexter and she asked me to send her an e-mail. Before long, I was put on my first assignment that was to interview a group of young budding businessmen. I did two pieces of writing on this and you can find them @ here and here.

Since then, I have written a few more times in Niexter. I wrote on The Rise of Malaysian Motorsports among others and today, a small testimonial to Niexter was featured in the paper too. Now, there are editorial teams so with this, I have the opportunity to meet other fellow Niexters and get a further in-depth experience of what journalism is all about.

My 'testimonial' in Niexter on Niexter!

One year can seem to be a short period of time, but the obvious benefits of Niexter are that it provides the platform for teenagers and young-adults like me to experience journalism at first hand, interview prominent individuals and also be featured in the newspaper. So, if you haven’t read Niexter, break the duck. And if you have the aspirations to contribute, get in touch with the NIE department.

I would sincerely like to wish Niexter a Happy First Anniversary, Happy Birthday, and anything else to that tune. I hope that Niexter will continue to serve its purposes well and be a phenomenon among teens from all over the country in the years to come.