Internet news magazine Agenda Malaysia (AM) will cease operations at year's end, its managing editor Rehman Rashid said today.

The website will keep its archives and columnists online and upload closing essays of its senior writers over the remaining days until Dec 31.

In an editorial posted on its website today entitled 'Game over', Rehman informed readers that AM had run out of finance. AM was launched in April this year.

Specifically, he said, AM had misjudged the development of Internet advertising in the country, "not only on pace but also direction, on which we were a neat 180 degrees off".

"With the advertising industry in general traditionally two steps behind the curve of ideas, we thought Internet advertising would work itself into gear this year. Instead, it seems to have nosedived into self-servitude and lost its head up its ass," he said.

Rehman added that AM had also misjudged promises received of good and reliable Web services and infrastructure that came with high price tags.

"AM and our sister site AgendaSeni were largely unavailable last week due to the massive collapse of our server providers deadly downtime for any commercial Web venture; theirs as much as ours," he said.

No government repression

He stressed, however, that the shutting down of the website had nothing to do with any sort of pressure on the part of the government.

"We stand instead as a lesson to the said authorities that repression, suppression and oppression are largely unnecessary when market verdicts count in an economy where no one is quite as competent as they'd like to think they are," Rehman said.

AM will be repackaging its archive of 740 articles into a print digest, Agenda Malaysia 2000: The Book which will retail at RM30.

Meanwhile, attempts to reach AM for further comments were unsuccessful. An office staff told malaysiakini that its chief executive officer Jaafar Ismail had no comments.

AM was launched on April 1 this year and is a venture of Maya Capital Sdn Bhd. The website provides information and commentary on current affairs and trends and developments in Malaysian business, government and society.