Is "Malaysia Chronicle" On The Way Out?

On line news portal "Malaysia Chronicle" used to attract the crowds, so to speak.

Malaysians needed, and still need of course, a SPACE TO SPEAK THEIR MINDS FREELY, and the news portal provided just the space for it.

There was hardly if at all any moderating/censoring of readers' comments, so everyone felt free to say anything - and I really mean, ANYTHING!

It must have been very liberating to its readers.

No one had seen or experienced anything like it before in the entire history of the Malaysian press/media, traditional or otherwise.

Anyone could just comment and anonymously too.

Before Malaysia Chronicle became popular, it was RPK's "Malaysia Today" that attracted a lot of attention until the readers perceived that the man himself no longer seemed to write like he used to.

Of course the freedom that Malaysia Chronicle had provided did attract a lot of irrelevant and rude comments, spams and paid cyber troopers who spouted absolute BS and incendiary and provocative inanities.  

A good thing just could not last.

And sure enough, Malaysia Chronicle has now made it more difficult for readers to comment by requiring them to sign in through their facebook or other social media accounts like Yahoo.

Articles on Mahathir used to attract hundreds of reactions, mostly negative ones.

But since the new comment system adopted by the on line news portal, the number of comments has gone down sharply.

This recent piece on the great man himself, has attracted only 23 comments so far.

Will Malaysia Chronicle slowly fade away as fewer and fewer readers bother to access it because they feel that they no longer can express themselves freely, and anonymously too if they so wanted?

That will be a pity.

Whether the old comment system was good or bad, at least everyone felt that for once, they truly had the space to say what they wanted to say, rightly or wrongly, that they could not do anywhere else.

Not so with the new comment system.

Perhaps, there is space now for another on line news portal like Malaysia Chronicle once was.