2024: What Difference a Year Makes, and Goodbye (for Now)

Dear Fulcrum readers,

There will be a publishing break for Fulcrum between Christmas and the New Year. We will resume publication on 2 January 2025.

2024 represents the fourth full year since Fulcrum was established in November 2020. What a difference a year has made. We have broken our records, in terms of the number of commentaries published and the number of users who have visited our website. In 2024, we published 381 Fulcrum commentaries, higher than the 302 published in 2023 and 362 in 2022. For website views, we hit 1.40 million in 2024, which is 55 per cent higher than the 900,000 registered in 2023, and nearly seven times higher than the 220,000 views in 2021 (Fulcrum’s first full year of operation). Our writers’ coverage of regional and global issues ranged from domestic political developments in Southeast Asian countries and the Sino-US rivalry and their impact on the region, as well as existential challenges such as climate change and the proliferation of artificial intelligence technologies.

Fulcrum viewers hailed mainly from five ASEAN countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia. Further afield, Fulcrum attracted readers from Australia, India and the US.

We are thankful for many things. During the year, we continued to record podcasts, even though such a format is not the raison d’etre of Fulcrum. We have expanded our team with the hiring of Jasmine Daniels, a sub-editor who leads our backend activities such as copy-editing, website layout and design. Fulcrum has also continued to publish Long Reads (which are adaptations of ISEAS’ signature Perspective series) and ASEANFocus Plus commentaries written by our colleagues and their associates at the ASEAN Studies Centre. Last but not least, we are grateful to our ISEAS colleagues who have, week in and week out, dutifully stepped up to the plate when asked to review drafts and write pieces. None of our commentaries would have been published without their valued judgement and suggestions with regard to improving drafts, and their research and writing.  

We would not be here today without the consistent support from our readers. Whenever I (William) flash my Fulcrum credentials at meetings and conferences, government officials, analysts and journalists are (largely) positive about Fulcrum and the insights they gleaned from reading material on Fulcrum. This is especially true for diplomats new to Singapore and Southeast Asia. One of them told me that reading Fulcrum helped them get up to speed with the puzzle that is Southeast Asia.

During our break, we will, in the week to come, republish the top 10 commentaries which attracted the most attention in 2024. We hope this will give a sense of the issues that mattered most to our readers.

The team at Fulcrum wishes all Fulcrum readers a restful and reflective Christmas and New Year!

The Editors and the Fulcrum team

Hae Won, Hwee Leng, Hwok Aun, Jasmine, Julia, Lydia, Max, Poh Onn, Sue-Ann and William