Balancing the world news
Time ripens all things. No man is born wise. So said Cervantes, the noted Spanish writer. These days, as this paper celebrates its 11th anniversary, we cannot help but recall those lines. Although 11 years is a short time in the lifespan of a newspaper, for a daily in this country to be able to survive and ripen in 11 years of living dangerously, by all accounts, is indeed no ordinary feat.
When, eleven years ago, on April 25, 1983, the first issue of this paper hit the streets, we believed that there was a big opportunity for an English newspaper to prosper in this country. We believed that because of language constraints, an English daily stood a better chance than one in the Bahasa Indonesia of speaking to the world and of representing Indonesia in the regional and eventually in the international arena.
From the very beginning, we also believed that if we wanted to address the imbalance in the dissemination of news in the world, which was considered to be dominated by the industrially advanced countries of the "North", we had to do it through an English- based medium.
Time has flown, the years have passed and experience shows what a formidable task it has been to realize that dream. In the span of 11 years, we have found that, indeed, no man -- or newspaper -- is born wise. It has been through many days of painful trials and errors that we have finally reached this stage. Every day new pieces of wisdom have been gained, which are necessary not only to our staying alive but to stepping closer towards our dream of becoming a true "journal of Indonesia today."
And hence, it is with pride that today we can report to you that we have reached the final stage in our plans to make The Jakarta Post "go international." For months we have negotiated with two leading news and data agencies of the world, one in the United States and one in Europe, to digitally link up our service with theirs. This means that soon, hopefully within weeks, subscribers on those two continents will be able to hook up their computers to those agencies and thus be able to read The Jakarta Post on the day of publication.
Compared to the newspaper giants in other countries, this is indeed a small step, but for us it is truly a big leap forward. It puts us in the position of being the first newspaper in this country to cross the international borderlines in news dissemination. For the first time, thousands of readers in other nations -- we are planning to extend the service to even more countries in the future -- will be able not only to read an Indonesian newspaper but to gain an Indonesian perspective of current events as well. For, being Indonesian, we will always see things in an Indonesian perspective.
Of course we could not have done it without the support of our discerning and faithful readers who keep us afloat and encourage us to continue to strive toward attaining better quality. And if we manage to do this, it is not just due to the merit of the people who run this newspaper at present, but also because of the contributions of those who have helped us in the past, those who have resigned, or moved to other companies, or even those who have passed away.
A newspaper is not the product of a day. It is the product of a long process initiated by its founders and nurtured by those who came later and who share the same dreams. It is only with this spirit of collective endeavor that we have been able to ripen and expand our wisdom.
To go international in this era of globalization is perhaps a small step for media giants, but for a newspaper in a developing country which has long been dominated by the Western media networks, it is really a giant step toward a more balanced dissemination of news. We sincerely hope that this effort may benefit us all.