Jeanette Tan

Editor and Writer in Singapore

Jeanette Tan

Editor and Writer in Singapore

Read my articles

I am a pioneering Singaporean digital enterprise builder who has worked in online-only journalism for the past decade, with skills in establishing systems, workflows, and house styles, organising news teams, instituting quality control and contributing actively in business and reporting strategy, apart from constantly honing and improving my own writing, storytelling, networking and relationship-building skills.

I started growing Yahoo's Singapore news team from 2011 to 2015, where I covered four elections, scored numerous scoops, did investigative features and a number of long-form profile feature interviews in both text and video formats. I won regional and national awards for my reportage, as well as an internal global editorial award for breaking news coverage.

I built further on my leadership, organisation-building and management skills as a founding editor at Mothership, Singapore's third-largest news and current affairs website. I hit the ground running, coordinating operations with teams of freelance writers and photographers, and also got our highly-acclaimed microsite assembled within a month and a half, for Mothership's General Election coverage that year.

I am a pioneer producer of Mothership's features and long-form repertoire, creating new content sections and teams dedicated to original, in-depth reporting and interviews. I built Mothership's house style from scratch, assigned resources to teams for various editorial functions, created the team's first weekend roster system and established the majority of its department-level policies and workflows.

I also played a key role in internal and external communications strategy, coaching young writers and editors in managing our external stakeholders, and establishing operating procedures that they could implement easily and impart to new hires.

I am recognised as a nurturing manager and editor, having personally mentored, if not directly supervised, almost all the young editors and mid-level management at the company. As the most experienced news media professional in the company, I imparted my own formal journalistic education and experience in teaching writing, editing, and management skills to my reports, many of whom are now themselves leaders of projects and people.

I now helm a major multimedia editorial project called Lessons on Leadership, featuring long-form interview profiles with entrepreneurs, CEOs and business leaders who form the bedrock of Singapore's economy.