Goodbye to good items
So what next? I didn't expect that without advertisements, the cost of a newspaper would be news in itself, something to read about.
As part of your cost-cutting measures, you have reduced the number of pages to eight, with consequent changes in the layout. Francis R. Denson's crossword puzzler has been chopped from the Sunday Post. Solving crosswords was a productive hobby, especially on Sunday mornings. I wish you could have at least retained the section Answer in English, which was useful for testing our skills in the Indonesian vocabulary.
Byron Black said "goodbye" in the last issue of the Listening Post. For years, we enjoyed his humorous essays. Obviously, all good things come to an end.
The next section to be removed was the Automotive Post, in which some fine articles about the automotive industry, written by our "Uncle", used to appear regularly.
Perhaps, I could try to suggest some ideas for further cost reductions. The need of the hour is a "flexi-management" strategy for sheer survival.
To start with, The World Paper should be a safe bet to get the ax. We just can't stomach any more "fresh perspective on global issues!" To our dismay and frustration, we've learned our bitter lessons what this "globalization" really means. A correspondent jocularly mentioned that APEC stood for American Plan for European Collapse. Did we miss something? Was the route for the American plan via Southeast Asia?
On the Sports Page, we are quite fed up seeing pictures of Bull Jordan's repeated attempts to put the ball in the basket. The photos are wonderful, no doubt. But sadly, you rarely published such captivating shots of Indonesian badminton heroes in action.
The daily agenda of TV Today could also be eliminated as it occupies quite a lot of space.
Another crazy idea, perhaps! The front page could be totally reserved for ads only, so that you can decide, on any day, whether it is worthwhile to publish the rest of the paper at all.
On front-page ads in newspapers, an interesting anecdote comes to mind. When Mahatma Gandhi died, there was only one newspaper, perhaps in the whole world, which did not publish the sad news on the front page. The newspaper was The Hindu, a prestigious and national newspaper of India. It was just that the management wouldn't change their policy of keeping the front page only for ads, even for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
Next on your casualty list, I fear, could be the popular Your Letters. Should you, however, choose to reinstate this column depending upon your ads' revenues, you might as well seek contributions from your own editors and staff. This should, at least, save the "labor" of changing readers' letters from the Queen's English to the American version. But then, of course, to be fair, you should remember to change the title of this column to Our Own Letters.
With all these "bright" ideas, you may be able to reduce the pages of The Jakarta Post to six. In such an event, I earnestly suggest that you reduce the price of the newspaper to an affordable level, so that people who are now forced to stop their subscription may revive reading the Post.
D. CHANDRAMOULI
Jakarta