Datuk Ahirudin Attan is the Executive Director at PETRA News. His role at PETRA News has him overseeing the group’s news media operations.

Working with some of the country’s best journalists and columnists, he and his PETRA News partner Terence Fernandez, are responsible for making TheVibes.com, the group’s online English news portal into a well respected and completely independent media network in Malaysia and the region.

He has had an illustrious career in journalism that has seen him serve as a reporter for some of the biggest national publications including The Star, the newspapers under the New Straits Times Group (where he was also assigned as their correspondent in London during the early 90s) and a Singapore daily.

Between 1997 and 2014 he has served as the editor of the Business Times (then Malaysia’s only financial daily) and The Malay Mail (Malaysia’s oldest newspaper). He was appointed as the first Advisor for The Malaysian Reserve. He is currently the president of the National Press Club of Malaysia, the nation’s oldest journalism institution.

Datuk Ahirudin is also a prominent blogger under his nom de plume of Rocky he has run a popular socio-political blog site called Rocky’s Bru for over 15 years. He set up the first association of bloggers in Malaysia that organised the inaugural Asean bloggers’ meeting in Kuala Lumpur in 2009. Then in 2011 he established themole.my, which is today one of the longest running English political news portal.

In 1985, he graduated from UiTM’s (Universiti Teknologi Mara) School of Journalism.