Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Straits Times was founded on the 15th of July 1845, launched as an eight-page weekly at 7 Commercial Square in Singapore. It was established by Catchick Moses and Robert Carr Woods Sr., with Woods serving as its first editor.
The Straits Times is owned by the SPH Media Trust. From 1984 until a later restructuring, it was part of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), a conglomerate that consolidated all English-, Chinese-, and Malay-language newspapers in Singapore under a single entity established on the 30th of November 1984.
The Straits Times has a long history of senior executives and editors drawn from government and civil service roles. After Lee Kuan Yew criticised the paper's coverage following the 1980 general election, it accepted a government nominee, S. R. Nathan, as executive chairman. A 2009 US diplomatic cable quoted the paper's own US bureau chief saying that SPH editors were groomed as pro-government supporters who kept reporting close to the official line.
Five days after the Fall of Singapore on the 15th of February 1942, Japan renamed the paper The Shonan Times. It went through several further name changes and became the Syonan Shimbun by the 8th of December 1943. During the occupation the paper was run by Japan's military propaganda division and used to promote Japanese language and culture, including a children's supplement called Sakura. The Straits Times name was restored on the 5th of September 1945.
A 2023 leak published on the website Wake Up, Singapore revealed that SPH Media had inflated its circulation figures in 2022 by 85,000-95,000 copies per day across all its publications, representing a 10-12% overstatement. The inflation was achieved through methods including counting destroyed copies, using fictitious tallies, and double-counting subscriptions.
The Straits Times has presented the Singaporean of the Year award annually since 2016 to a Singaporean citizen whose contributions have had a significant impact on others. The first recipient was Noriza A. Mansor, recognised for a public act of selfless assistance in 2014. Nominees are assessed by a panel of 15 judges that includes Straits Times editors and other Singaporean public figures.