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.