By and for the community

By and for the community

Anniversaries are always a time to celebrate as well as a time
to contemplate. Before we raise our glasses to toast The Jakarta
Post's 22nd anniversary today, let us share with our readers our
contemplation about this newspaper and its future.

Twenty-two is still a very young age for a newspaper,
especially considering that the industry, according to the World
Association of Newspapers, marks its 400th anniversary this year.
But this is all the more reason why we at The Jakarta Post are
determined to do the right thing as a newspaper. Given our
relatively young age, there is so much that we can and must do.
One area where we feel we have come particularly short in the
past is in serving our community of readers.

As an Indonesian newspaper printed in the English-language, we
serve a very distinct group of readers. Broadly, they can be put
into two categories: the expatriate community who live, work or
visit Indonesia, and the Indonesian community who actively use
the English language. Their numbers, according to our own
surveys, are nearly the same, with the Indonesian readership
slightly higher than non-Indonesians.

While these two groups may be distinct, they are equal in many
respects. Our survey found these readers share many of the
characteristics that put them in, for want of a better term, the
middle class. These include their educational background,
profession, income level and property ownership.

Thus, despite different nationalities and cultural
backgrounds, they share many of the middle-class values and
interests that are common in most parts of the world. They long
for security, peace and prosperity, as well as the ability to
live and work, to enjoy life, and to raise their family in peace
and tranquility. They also long to live in a country that
respects such values as personal freedoms, the rights to free
expression, to free association, to freely practice their faith,
democracy and respect for human rights.

Many of our readers, non-Indonesians and Indonesians alike,
have the option to move to and live in another country that can
offer them the atmosphere to lead a decent life. The fact that
many of them stay, through the good and bad here, suggests that
they still believe in the future of this country. We do too.

Not coincidentally, the values and interests that our readers
subscribe to are the same values that The Jakarta Post, as an
Indonesian newspaper, seeks to defend and promote. The promotion
of a more humane civil society in this very diverse country, as
is written in our vision statement, corresponds well with those
values.

When The Jakarta Post hit the streets for the first time on
April 25, 1983, it had always been our intention to fight for the
promotion of a more democratic Indonesia. In the 1990s, we stuck
our neck out with a few other like-minded publications as far as
we could to test the limits of press freedom allowed by the
powers that-be at that time. After the Soeharto regime collapsed
in 1998, we took upon ourselves the mission of pushing for the
civil society agenda.

During all these years of struggle, it is easy for us to
forget why, and more specifically, for whom, we are fighting. It
is certainly not for own benefit alone that we have been waging
these battles: it is ultimately for the benefits of the public at
large, for the nation as a whole and more specifically, for our
readers, both Indonesians and non-Indonesians.

A newspaper cannot separate itself from its readers, their
interests and their values. When it does, it will not be a
question of a newspaper abandoning its readers, as much as
readers abandoning its newspaper which has become out of touch.

The Jakarta Post's future hinges on the continued loyalty and
patronage of our readers. As we mark our 22nd anniversary, we
find the need to touch base with you, our readers more
frequently. We need to know you all better in order to serve
better.

This year, we have started a campaign to focus on some of
different communities of our readership. In March, we began with
the Indian community. This month is Korean month, and Japan will
be the flavor of the month in May. We have started with the Asian
expatriate communities because they count among the larger groups
of foreigners in Indonesia. Other large expatriate communities
will follow thereafter. Then there will also be special campaigns
focused on different Indonesian communities.

These are among the steps that we are taking, essentially to
bring ourselves closer to you. The Jakarta Post is, at the end of
the day, a community newspaper. Ours is a community not so much
defined by geography as by shared values and shared interests. It
is a small community but one that is expanding and vibrant.

We thank our readers and advertisers, and supporting partners,
our colleagues, contributors and news sources, for their
continued loyalty and support all these years, and we look
forward to more exciting years together ahead of us.