23 May 2026 By Cherry May
YANGON, Myanmar — The Daily Eleven, one of Myanmar’s most prominent domestic newspapers, has announced it will permanently suspend its daily print edition starting 31 May, marking a significant milestone in the rapid collapse of the country’s independent print journalism landscape.
The newspaper was launched on 3 May 2013, during the democratic transition under President Thein Sein’s administration, making it one of the first five private daily newspapers allowed to publish after decades of state monopoly. However, its 13-year run has come to a controversial end, shadowed by allegations of editorial bias favoring the ruling military junta.
The closure has drawn mixed reactions within Myanmar’s highly polarized media sector. While some journalists mourn the overarching decline of traditional print literacy, others view the paper’s demise as an inevitable consequence of its editorial choices.
“Regardless of a newspaper’s political stance, the disappearance of a print publication is a tragic symptom of the current era,” a domestic journalist told MPA. “The traditional newspaper culture is systematically vanishing as audiences migrate to digital spaces. However, for a publication that essentially transformed into a megaphone for military propaganda after the coup, I have no sympathy. They reaped what they sowed.”
An editor from an exiled media outlet offered a more measured perspective, emphasizing the loss of information diversity for the general public. “We shouldn’t celebrate the death of any publication simply based on political alignment. Reading a physical newspaper offers an analytical experience that digital media lacks. Despite Eleven’s deeply unpopular editorial pivot post-coup, its archives still provided some value and data to ordinary citizens.”
Eleven Media Group has officially cited severe economic headwinds for the suspension, pointing to hyperinflation affecting newsprint paper imports, skyrocketing logistical costs, and a sharp decline in physical readership.
Kyaw Zaw Lin, the Editor-in-Chief of Eleven Media, stated to local outlets that the company plans to undergo a total digital restructuring, shifting its core operations to online platforms and recruiting new digital-native staff to manage the transition.
However, Yangon residents note that the publication’s financial troubles were heavily exacerbated by a massive public boycott. Following the February 2021 coup, The Daily Eleven drew intense public fury after its editors adopted the junta’s preferred terminology, referring to the violent military takeover merely as a constitutional “takeover of state power.”
“I used to buy it every single day because its sections were incredibly comprehensive,” a 60-year-old political observer from Taunggyi said. “But after the coup, seeing how they sanitized the military’s actions, I refused to spend a single Kyat on it. I only read it occasionally if I stumbled upon a copy.”
The closure of The Daily Eleven leaves The Standard Time (San Taw Chein) as the sole surviving private daily newspaper from the historic 2013 cohort still operating inside the country.
The printing sector has been systematically dismantled under the junta’s Ministry of Information. According to latest official registries, the regime has revoked the operational licenses of 97 domestic news agencies, 373 journals, 320 magazines, 22 newspaper printing houses, and over 600 general publishing businesses.
As independent newsrooms are forced into exile or locked down by regime bureaucracy, the silent printing presses of Yangon underscore a grim reality: the spaces for open reporting within Myanmar have been effectively choked out, leaving a fragmented digital landscape as the sole remaining battleground for information.
