In the last 30 years between 1983 and 2013, for example, the number of people here grew from 2.7 million to 5.4 million.
So in quantity, the doubling of Singapore’s population by itself alone would have meant a big increase in the public demand for news.
That, in turn, must surely mean “more readable” pages and higher profits for any daily – particularly a monopolised one.
When the population was very small, it was easy for the government to argue that the Republic could not sustain more than one newspaper.
And Lee Kuan Yew used that argument for decades to stop the granting of more printing permits. Full story
