The newest Chinese newspaper on the block, Oriental Daily News , has launched a new round of marketing campaign to counter circulation obstacles allegedly undertaken by its rivals.

The 11-month-old daily's managing editor Ng Nyen Fah told malaysiakini that the company has invested RM10 million for the present campaign aimed at breaking the monopoly held by the four other major Chinese dailies.

To do so, Oriental Daily plans to hire its own vendors to sell the paper, without having to solely rely on other vendors who face problems from the other Chinese dailies for selling Oriental Daily .

"We will employ 1,000 independent vendors who will mainly concentrate in the Klang Valley. These people will be given a special RM500 monthly allowances to for just selling our paper," said Ng.

The major Chinese dailies in the market are Sin Chew Daily and Guang Ming Daily , both published by Pemandangan Sinar, owned by Sarawakian timber tycoon Tiong Hiew King, and the MCA-owned Nanyang Siang Pau and China Press . These dailies have a combined circulation of 800,000 copies per day.

Circulation down

Vendors are reluctant to sell Oriental Daily , claiming that they faced retribution from the other Chinese dailies. Vendors who sold Oriental Daily had their agency rights for the other dailies suspended, causing a big hole in their pockets, and this resulted in them ignoring Oriental Daily altogether.

This caused the circulation of the daily to drop drastically. At present the daily has a circulation of 70,000 to 80,000 copies per day, compared to 120,000 when it was first published.

However there are still some vendors who continue to sell Oriental Daily along with the other Chinese dailies, said Ng.

Ng stressed that his paper was not keen to have a monopoly by having its exclusive band of vendors.

"This concept might be misconstrued as a 'revenge' in the sense that we might be seen as blocking our own vendors from selling other papers.

"We give our assurance that we will not do so...we won't deter our vendors from distributing other papers ," he added.

However Ng said that the vendors would have to forgo their RM500 monthly allowance if they decide to sell other dailies as well.

Ads blitz

Oriental Daily

's new campaign started of with a series of advertisements - published for three days since Wednesday - in the daily.

The advertisements, aimed at educating its readers the problems the daily faces in breaching the market, asked questions such as "Could the Chinese community's voice be monopolised by one paper?" and "Could the freedom to purchase paper be denied?".

Ng said the advertisement blitz was not meant to attack its business rivals, but were just "marketing strategy".

Finding vendors to break into the market is just one of the problems the daily is facing. The daily is still unsure of how the Home Ministry - in charge of all print publications - will view its contents, especially when the time comes to renew the annual printing license.

Oriental Daily has already run afoul with the ministry when it was slapped with a suspension order on the very same day it first hit the streets.

No reason was given for the suspension which came on Sept 29 last year but some quarters claimed it was politically motivated.

However, the daily managed to hit the streets again on Jan 1 after negotiations with the ministry, only to counter distribution problems.

Oriental Daily

is owned by KTS Group, a company of another Sarawakian timber tycoon Lau Hui Kang.