The country’s latest online news portal has been launched. It went on the air just after midnight today. The Daily Chilli, a product of The Star, has promised to be more exciting and provocative in its reporting.

"Right now, they are either political or the electronic version of the printed newspapers. Daily Chilli, however, exist on its own. The news would be different as we aim to be exciting, more breezy and more provocative,", according to Star Group Chief Editor Wong Chun Wai.

From left, Purwaiz Alam, Chief Sub-Editor, Datuk Wong Chun Wai, Group Chief Editor and Veera Pandiyan Manickam, Associate Editor.

Wong admits that without the need for a printing permit, the Daily Chilli would have better breathing space but said politics would not be its main news items.

“There are enough political websites like Malaysiakini, Malaysian Mirror and Malaysian Insider and they are all doing a good job. Daily Chilli aims at readers who are looking for something else besides politics,’’ he said.

He said The Star Online already has 55mil page views a month while the newspaper had a circulation of over 300,000.

"The Daily Chilli, together with Mstar (the Bahasa Malaysia news portal) and other new portals such as the Property Portal is our foray into multi-media," he said, adding that Deputy Executive Chairman Datuk Clement Hii has given priority to this multi media plan.

Wong said the stories in Daily Chilli would be Twitter and Facebook-centric as it hoped to get the support of these young readers.

He said there would be a section called “Just 140” - in reference to the maximum number of characters to tweet - where personalities would be featured.

The portal, he said, was headed by Associate Editor Veera Pandiyan and Assistant Chief Sub-Editor Purwaiz Alam.

Asked why was it called Daily Chilli: “Why not? In the age of Yahoo, Goggle, Ipod, Tomato Weekly, so why not something spicy and hot where Malaysians can relate to,’’ he said.

The Daily Chilli intends to an alternative source of news. Unlike The Star, NST or Sun, this online news website intends to present news in a more interesting manner. The same news could be in these papers but the slant would be more interesting and even more provocative. We would be more adventurous in our headings by incorporating Malaysian lingo, for example, "lah." and "can or not?" 

I think Malaysian news readers have their share of socio-political news sites such as Malaysiakini, Malaysian Insider,The Malaysian Mirror and Nutgraph, then rhere are rhe online news site of the major print newspapers.

They have their strong following and I think this is the way forward. The Daily Chilli isn't competiting with these sites. We want to be different. We can have an EPL big match, for example, as the lead story. Obviously none of the news sites we mentioned would do that.

A crime story can even be the lead story for Daily Chilli but we would incorporate more human interest angle and our reporters would look for that extra details which the other newspapers may missed.

We would include a lot of elements from Twitter and Facebook. As you can see in the first edition, we have stories that are Twitter and Facebook based. I think our younger readers, which is our target, would be able to relate to them. We have introduiced "Just 140" where we would introduce personalities who Tweet. "Just 140" is so named because that's the maximum number of characters in the Twitter box.

We are also using our Asia News Network alliance, of which The Star is a member, to source for more regional stories. Our main partner is The New Newspaper of Singapore, where the Daily Chilli cooperate to exchange stories and pictures. 

The Daily Chilli is part of The Star's move into multi-media, which is essentially what our Executive Deputy Chairman Datuk Clement Hii, is encouraging. More websites and portals are being planned.

The Star Online has 55mil page views a month while the printed edition sells over 300,000 copies daily with over a million readers. But we are no longer just a publications company as we have invested a lot of time and resources into multi-media pursuits. 

At this point, the Daily Chilli intends to be experimental as Malaysian journalism evolves. Heading the Daily Chilli desk are my colleagues Associate Editor M.Veera and Chief Sub-Editor Purwaiz Alam. The Daily Chilli has created so much excitement in the newsroom of The Star that I get many requests for secondment and trasnsfers to Daily Chilli.

Daily Chilli can be access at www.dailychilli.com