Jom

Jom is a weekly digital magazine founded to inform and delight with slow journalism.

The Jom team includes:
• Charmaine Poh, Head of Visual Culture and Media
• Tsen-Waye Tay, Head of Content
• Sudhir Vadaketh, Editor-in-Chief
• Faris Joraimi, History Editor
• Jean Hew, Head of Research
• Fiachra Ross, Social Media Manager

11/01/2025

By normalising rest, can individuals find greater fulfilment and balance, challenging the capitalist emphasis on relentless productivity growth and a hustle culture?

Photographs by Ting Wang, Toh Ee Ming and from Canva

By normalising rest, can individuals find greater fulfilment and balance, challenging the capitalist emphasis on relentless productivity growth and a hustle culture?

10/01/2025

Parliament’s discussion of the NRIC unmasking debacle; the worrying inequalities in literary and other proficiencies in Singapore, according to the OECD; “kidults” and their toys; and more.

🇸🇬 Read more in “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-100125/

07/01/2025

Our festive sale ends at midnight!

Subscribe now for just S$88 per year. That’s 25 percent off our monthly rate.

Grab it now: https://www.jom.media/membership/

01/01/2025

Happy New Year! If one of your resolutions is to read more, consider buying Jom’s annual Print Issue No. 2.

It offers the same high quality, long-form journalism, but with specially curated content that only a tactile, physical copy can offer. This year’s themes are Music, Ecology, and Solidarity, featuring essays by Faris Joraimi on the golden age of Malay music; Kristian Marc-James Paul on activism in Singapore; Tsen-Waye Tay on our food security; and more. There’s a crossword too, and mordant satire from The Mockingbird.

The cover is by Emma Chong, known for her watercolour work. In contrast to the more common depiction of Singapore as a dense, urban environment, we wanted to paint a picture of space and wonder. Our intertidal zones, shown gleaming at daybreak, are often wiped out by land reclamation, through which Singapore’s land mass has increased by a quarter.

Get your copy now: https://www.jom.media/shop

Photographs by Jay Wong for Jom

28/12/2024

“‘You can touch him,’ my friend said. The gelding moved forward with an uneven gait, towering over my head. Is that an injury? He lowered his velvety snout, initiating a nose rub.

Restraining myself slightly, I inched forward and gave him an assuring caress on his gigantic snout. The gush of warm breath right after seemed like an affectionate sign of approval.

Fuzzy. I felt a rush of adrenaline and that’s when I knew. I was and would always be obsessed with horses, especially racehorses.”

Read the essay: https://www.jom.media/vanishing-hoofprints/

🎁 We're offering a discount over the festive period. A year of Jom for only S$88 per year—25 percent off our monthly rate. Consider subscribing, or giving a subscription to your loved ones. www.jom.media/membership/

Illustrations by How Kah Hwee and photographs from Canva

26/12/2024

The Jom house style, adopted from Western magazines, dictates that all foreign words be italicised. But what is “foreign”, really? When our speech is effortlessly sprinkled with kampungs, alamaks, and bagus, why should we insist on their other-ness in writing?

We’re creating our own Style Guide, rooted in English, naturally, but with local flavours. Help us. Which words do you think we should drop the italics for because, in our part of the world, they’re as English as “avant-garde” or “kindergarten”?

Leave a comment or send us a DM, and we’ll select five of our favourite responses to win a Jom tote bag!

22/12/2024

“Your rites of passage, it turns out, are really not about you.”

The unmasking of NRICs and the masking of bungalow deals point to the transactional nature of life here, and to potential challenges for the ruling party.

Read the essay now: jom.media/a-torrid-december-for-the-pap-transparency-trust-and-truth-under-scrutiny/

🎁 We're offering a discount over the festive period. A year of Jom for only S$88 per year—25 percent off our monthly rate. Consider subscribing, or giving a subscription to your loved ones: https://www.jom.media/membership/

Photographs from Canva

20/12/2024

In “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: Is Singaporeans’ incessant complaining, about almost everything, helpful or harmful?

Also featuring: IC-you; the historic 1984 general election; analogue music in a digital world; a potential presidential pardon for TikTok; and more.

Read it here: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-201224/

This is our last issue of the year! To give everybody at Jom a break, we’re off for the next two weeks.

🎁 While we’re away, check out our festive period discount. A year of Jom is only S$88 per year—25 percent off our monthly rate. Consider subscribing, or giving a subscription to your loved ones. www.jom.media/membership/

Photographs from Canva

18/12/2024

Love Singapore? Know Singapore. Get a Jom subscription, or make a gift of it. Use our festive offer: only S$88 for a year. That’s 25 percent off our monthly rate. Head over to our online shop: https://www.jom.media/membership/

Illustrations by Canva

17/12/2024

Is it true that George Goh was a government plant to ensure credible (though not too credible) “opposition” to Tharman in last year’s presidential election? Were the 1961 Bukit Ho Swee fires manufactured in order to quell resistance towards the government’s relocation efforts?

Pradeep Krishnan isn’t here to explore any of these individual theories. Instead, he assesses the socio-political environment that may foster their emergence.

“In casual settings, most people I’ve spoken to hold a rather poor impression of conspiracy theory believers: ‘lunatics’, ‘Trump supporters’, ‘anti-establishmentarians’, ‘crazy’, are among terms I hear bandied about.Though understandable, this impression—and perhaps more precisely, its universalism—is a little unfair, and should be challenged.”

Read more: https://www.jom.media/keep-an-open-mind-the-political-significance-of-conspiracy-theory-beliefs-in-singapore-2/

Illustrations by Diva Agar

Conspiracy theorists are usually mocked, ridiculed and dismissed. However, instead of focusing on individuals, we need to interrogate the larger socio-political conditions that make people more susceptible to believing in seemingly outlandish theories.

13/12/2024

Elon Musk’s claims Singapore is “going extinct”; the difficulties with reintegrating ex-offenders into society; a new theatre fellowship in honour of the late Shahid Nasheer; and more.

🇸🇬 Read“Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-131224/

Photograph from Canva

07/12/2024

The notion that stability, security and growth can be achieved only by keeping democracy’s inherent messiness at bay has almost become a national truism. Leon Perera, a former member of Parliament, interrogates it.

Illustrations by Grace Hong for Jom, and photographs from Canva and Wikipedia

Read this essay now: https://www.jom.media/is-one-party-dominance-necessary-for-sustainable-long-term-policymaking/

06/12/2024

Deer fatality in Mandai; police drones in our skies; the downsides of a free trading port, the kebaya makes it to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list; Cultural Medallion winners announced; tech giant Figma sues a start-up; and more.

🇸🇬 Read “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-061224/

30/11/2024

Daniel Hui’s fêted feature, refused classification in Singapore, is both admonition and plea. Through a series of legal cases—some known, others forgotten—it asks us to look, to listen, and thus, to care.

Photographs courtesy of Ivan Tan and 13 Little Pictures

https://www.jom.media/to-see-and-be-seen-a-close-watch-of-small-hours-of-the-night/

29/11/2024

The People’s Action Party’s biennial conference; yet another “blackface” incident; the solitude-loneliness spectrum; a treaty discussion in New Zealand; ‘tis the season for giving; tech-powered building designs; and more.

🇸🇬 Read “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-291124/

Photographs from Canva and People’s Action Party

25/11/2024

Print issue #2 cover reveal!

Join us for the launch party on Dec 3rd, Tuesday, from 6.30pm to 8.30pm at casual poet library.

Entry is free but RSVP is required via Peatix: jom-print-issue-2.peatix.com

23/11/2024

“As a survivor of sexual assault, I’ve learned that trauma, healing, and the memories of violence don’t operate within neat paradigms or conform to any intuitive, linear structure. I was r***d a few years ago by a person I’ll call Sami, a software developer now based in Seattle. But I’d somehow been able to find some semblance of closure a lot more straightforwardly than the single time I got molested, almost a year after my encounter with Sami.”

Jom is keeping this essay outside the paywall till Monday, November 25th, The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

https://www.jom.media/consent-trauma-and-healing-a-survivors-messy-story-2/

Photographs by Rachel Loh for Jom

22/11/2024

The crisis facing local hawkers; good news about low-income families on aid; improvements in foreign worker dorms; the US returns historical artefacts to Thailand; two Singaporean, Hokkien-language films gaining attention in China; an initiative to help women return to the tech workforce; and more.

🇸🇬 Read “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-221124/

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Videos

Recording Jom’s first ever podcast! Donald Low (@donaldlow73), economist and author of a new book, “The Price of Zero: China’s policy missteps during and after Covid”, talks about possible criminal activity alongside huge inflows of capital into Singapore from China. 👀 Stay tuned for Jom’s first podcast series hosted by Jean, our Head of Research.

Happy New Year! If one of your resolutions is to read more, consider buying Jom’s annual Print Issue No. 2. It offers the same high quality, long-form journalism, but with specially curated content that only a tactile, physical copy can offer. This year’s themes are Music, Ecology, and Solidarity, featuring essays by Faris Joraimi on the golden age of Malay music; Kristian Marc-James Paul on activism in Singapore; Tsen-Waye Tay on our food security; and more. There’s a crossword too, and mordant satire from The Mockingbird. The cover is by Emma Chong, known for her watercolour work. In contrast to the more common depiction of Singapore as a dense, urban environment, we wanted to paint a picture of space and wonder. Our intertidal zones, shown gleaming at daybreak, are often wiped out by land reclamation, through which Singapore’s land mass has increased by a quarter. Get your copy now: https://www.jom.media/shop Photographs by Jay Wong for Jom

Happy New Year! If one of your resolutions is to read more, consider buying Jom’s annual Print Issue No. 2. It offers the same high quality, long-form journalism, but with specially curated content that only a tactile, physical copy can offer. This year’s themes are Music, Ecology, and Solidarity, featuring essays by Faris Joraimi on the golden age of Malay music; Kristian Marc-James Paul on activism in Singapore; Tsen-Waye Tay on our food security; and more. There’s a crossword too, and mordant satire from The Mockingbird. The cover is by Emma Chong, known for her watercolour work. In contrast to the more common depiction of Singapore as a dense, urban environment, we wanted to paint a picture of space and wonder. Our intertidal zones, shown gleaming at daybreak, are often wiped out by land reclamation, through which Singapore’s land mass has increased by a quarter. Get your copy now (link in bio). Photographs by Jay Wong for Jom #essay #journalism #jom #singapore #sg

Jom is a weekly digital magazine covering arts, culture, politics, business, technology and more in Singapore. We were founded to inform and delight with slow journalism, grounded in humility and sensitivity, and guided by the never-ending quest for truth. Through our stories, we seek to build community, promote inclusiveness, and inspire connections around issues that matter, even as we write critically about them. Read our essays, link in our bio.

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