Building a newspaper on the public's trust

Raymond Toruan, Executive Director, PT Bina Media Tenggara and Chief Editor The Jakarta Post

"I QUIT" The unusually large, nine-column headline splashed across The Jakarta Post's front page on Friday, May 22, 1998, was more than just a report on then president Soeharto's announcement the day before.

Technically, the five-star Gen. Soeharto never resigned, as misreported by all other newspapers in Indonesia and mistranslated by wire services across the globe. There was no such word as "resign", which would have been tantamount to admitting defeat or failure, in the vocabulary of a haughty Javanese soldier like Soeharto.

He simply quit the presidency, implying that his duties were no longer worth his while. It was a clear signal to all that he believed he had not failed his country and was leaving on his own terms.

That memorable report not only marked the end of Soeharto's three decades of authoritarian leadership, but also proved a coming of age for The Jakarta Post in its relatively short history.

Of course, the first milestone was the appearance of our debut issue on Monday, April 25, 1983. It was the first newspaper to be born of the shared ideals and the combined endeavors of a number of this country's leading and simultaneously competing media publishers.

A special message from the publisher printed on the front page of that first issue said the newspaper wished "to present an accurate daily record of Indonesia today; the dynamics of an emerging nation and regional economic power, and the many facets and fascinations of Indonesia's unique culture and history".

Initially, the intention was to publish an English-language newspaper of the highest editorial quality that would not only cater to the fast growing expatriate community in the country - the result of more than a decade of opening up the Indonesian economy to the global community - but, more importantly, provide an Indonesian perspective to counter the Western-dominated global traffic of news and views.

It turned out that 1983 was not a good year to start a business in Indonesia, especially a newspaper. Only a year earlier the country experienced its lowest economic performance since the beginning of the New Order's economic development programs in 1969. The economy did not catch up with the high growth rate of the 1970s until after 1984.

To make matters worse, the first five-year business projection for The Jakarta Post was based on the high growth rate of the country's economy of the 1970s, setting out an overly optimistic three-year period of deficits before comfortably reaching the break-even point.

Things did not go according to plan.

On the first day of circulation, 5,474 copies of the newspaper reached our readers. And advertising, the lifeblood of any modern newspaper, amounted to an average of less than 10 percent of a page for the then eight -page edition for the rest of the year.

Entering our third year, paid circulation figures hovered around only 12,800 copies a day. By that time, The Jakarta Post had surpassed the combined paid circulation of the two other older English-language newspapers, the Indonesian Observer and The Indonesian Times.

However, even though the growth of circulation up to that period was relatively high, it was still not enough to draw advertisers and advertising agencies. By 1985, sold advertising space did not even reach 30 percent of space on a daily basis.

To make ends meet, the management was forced to borrow money during the fourth year, since the starting capital had run out. Fortunately, Indonesia's economy was on an upturn, making it possible for the management to repay its debt within a two-year period.

Almost without realizing it, the newspaper entered a new stage around 1990. While paid circulation figures sustained a growth rate of more than 12 percent a year, there was a clear indication that it was starting to level off. A study on the newspaper market showed that while around two-thirds of the Post's readers were expatriates, the paper had practically saturated that particular segment.

To keep growing in terms of circulation, we had to explore a new audience and penetrate the Indonesian market.

It was a totally new ball game, involving harsh competition against more established Indonesian-language newspapers. More importantly, it necessitated a reorientation of the Post's editorial content. Foreign readers had different tastes, interests and needs from Indonesian ones. The newspaper was called upon strike a cultural balance, catering to its Indonesian readers while accommodating its loyal expatriate subscribers.

For that purpose, the Post assigned a research institution, Resource Productivity Center, to conduct a series of readership surveys, market research and focus group discussions starting from the end of 1990. The objective was to find a new formula, both for the editorial content as well as for appropriate marketing that would expand the Indonesian readership without relinquishing its dominant position in the expatriate market.

By 1992, a new strategy was in place and taking the newspaper along a new course. The Post had a distinct advantage over Indonesian-language publications in facing new challenges.

Soeharto's repressive regime, through the Ministry of Information as well as its complex network of security agencies, scoffed at the very notion of freedom of the press. Harassment and intimidation were the order of the day, as was the summary banning of publications. Even the killing of a muckraking journalist could happen with impunity.

Under such difficult circumstances, the Post enjoyed some leeway because it was in English, a much more straightforward, "tell it like it is" language than Indonesian. We could report stories that other Indonesian newspapers did not dare publish, with the government's press watchdogs daunted by the prospect of poring over an English-language article.

These advantages helped fuel a high growth rate through the early 1990s, and by 1995, our readership profile had changed. The absolute number of expatriate readers did not decrease, but its proportion of the total readership dropped to around a third. Meanwhile, the political situation had become increasingly repressive, especially for the press after the closing down of the popular Tempo magazine in 1994. The situation pushed The Jakarta Post into a peculiar position, a symbol of credibility and a voice of reason among the mostly meek Indonesian press.

Circulation figures kept growing and set a record (50,000 paid copies in April 1997), with the paper promoted to the club of the 10 most-sought-after newspapers for advertising in the country.

Then came that memorable headline story of Friday, May 22, 1998, which also marked the opening of a new chapter in our history.

The total absence of a sense of urgency in the country, which let the financial crisis of mid-1997 snowball into the multidimensional mayhem that helped toppled Soeharto less than a year later, drastically changed the environment of the newspaper industry in the country.

The plunge in the rupiah meant a quadrupling in the cost of newsprint. The economic crisis spelled a drop in purchasing power of the public, and consequently fewer buyers for Indonesian papers. We found ourselves living a nightmare reality: higher costs combined with severely reduced revenue.

The constraints on the newspaper industry did not stop there. Almost at the same time, globalization and the superabundance of information drastically altered the newspaper environment in Indonesia. Meanwhile, the rapid transformation of our society has radically changed readers' habits, needs, lifestyles and interests.

Newspapers are no longer the predominant providers of news and views. New technology is developed almost every week, opening up new options in communication and broadcasting to provide diverse real-time information. News becomes outdated only a few minutes after the event.

The post-Soeharto era, with its defining slogan of reformasi (reform), has brought additional challenged for the Post, as we are now not alone in publishing daring stories. The Ministry of Information no longer exists, its draconian reach now a thing of the past. Practically anybody can publish a newspaper and print stories that were once taboo.

For this very reason, we are striving to revamp this newspaper, to reformulate its vision, to review every aspect of its operations and to reorganize in order to meet the needs and demands of our readers.

In short, it means redefining our approach to journalism, exploring relevance beyond the basic news, providing a meaningful context for every story and supplying useful knowledge for our special breed of readers.

Our basic intent and beliefs, however, remain true to those of our first day of publication 20 years ago. For a newspaper, meeting the public trust is everything because readers seek more than the outlining of news and views. It is the trust of our readers that spurs The Jakarta Post to continue serving the public by striving for excellence in reporting.