Life goes on, amid bitterness for former 'Tempo' staff
JAKARTA (JP): Losing your job can be painful, even when it happens to a whole company. But life must go on, and that's the attitude adopted by the former employees of Tempo, DeTik and Editor.
Says Eddy Herwanto, general manager of Tiras magazine: "We were devastated when the government revoked Editor's license last year because we had just finished reorganizing our management."
At that time Editor had gained considerable credibility as one of the most resourceful and reliable news magazines in Indonesia. In terms of finance, it had just emerged, triumphant, from a drawn-out financial struggle.
Just two months before the banning, in April l994, it increased the salaries of its employees by between 25 percent and 40 percent, depending on their performance.
When the axe fell, Herwanto, Marah Sakti Siregar, Surono and other members of the board of directors encouraged their workers to remain calm and optimistic.
Fortunately, Herwanto said, the cash flow of the company which ran the magazine was quite healthy. "We gave assurances to our employees that they would receive their full salaries for three months and, from then until we got a new license, between a half and three-quarters of their pay."
The majority of reporters and administrative employees adopted a wait-and-see attitude, while some took other jobs which they considered more promising.
"It was, indeed, their right to seek a better life, but still we felt unhappy because they belonged to our family," Herwanto said.
To maintain their cash-flow and to remain active, Editor's staff did a lot of company profiles and other work. Some reporters began doing various moonlighting jobs, but the management asked them to quit to avoid any hard feelings among the staff.
In the meantime, some prominent businessmen expressed interest in investing in a new publication to replace the banned Editor.
"Some businessmen even pressured me to accept their offers. But I had to study their proposals thoroughly before I could make a decision. I did not want to make a deal that would inflict any losses on our employees. The most important thing was that the involvement of any new investor would not interfere with our editorial content," he said.
It was PT Pranadipa Persada, a subsidiary of the ALatief Corporation, owned by Minister of Manpower Abdul Latief, which became a partner in a new magazine.
"We conducted very tough negotiations for almost five months (August-December l994) before reaching the current agreement," Herwanto said.
He said that Tiras was 36 percent owned by PT Adidaya Visi Selaras, a company established by several former Editor employees just three days after it was closed, 14 percent by Bobby Arief Rudianto, a former shareholder of Editor, 30 percent by PT Pranadipa Persada, and 20 percent by the magazine's employees. The magazine is published by PT Indepenindo Bangun Media.
The license to publish the new magazine was obtained only in January. Initially, it was to be called Pro-aktif, but eventually the name Tiras was settled upon.
The new magazine employs over 107 former Editor employees, more than half of them journalists. It also recruited 17 new reporters to replace former journalists who had left.
"We know that it was not the right time to launch a new magazine as competition in this field is very keen. But we are still optimistic about regaining a good market share," Herwanto commented.
Tiras currently has a national circulation of between 70,000 and 80,000.
Yuanida Rosita, 28, popularly known as Ossy, was a secretary in the Tempo news room from 1991 until the ban. Now she is the secretary of the "Tebet Group" of ex-Tempo journalists. Her work is similar, but the office she supports is smaller than it was before.
Ossy said that, although she was working in Tebet, she was not taking sides in the disagreement between the leading newsweekly's former employees.
"I decided to work for them because I am closer to them than to those working for Gatra," she said.
She said she was happy being with the Tebet camp, even though she is paid less now than before.
"Money is not everything. The important thing is that we get along well with the people who work with us," she said.
Dewi Anggraeni, formerly Tempo's correspondent in Melbourne, Australia, who now writes for a number of publications, including The Jakarta Post, said: "My daughter has a name for a journalist who writes for several publications: a media groupie.
"Being a sixties' throwback (again, my offspring's definition of me) the word groupie does not evoke respectability. So, cringing and withdrawing into a dark corner, I picture a casual conversation between my daughter and her friends at the universi ty."
"'So what does your mother do?' (being second-generation feminists, they'd hardly be interested in what fathers do)."
"'She's a media groupie.'"
"'Wow, that's cool!'"
"Phew! Maybe I can come out now. In this era of take-overs, networking and globalization, I suspect I am not the only media groupie around. Besides, at my age, what other type of groupie can one be?"
"So that was what happened to me after the closure of my then- employer, Tempo, this time last year."
"Little has changed in terms of the day-to-day activities. During my years with Tempo I was trained to be as resilient and as flexible as possible. I was my own accounts clerk (a job I detest), lobbyist (generally interesting though not always pleasant), researcher and writer (the most pleasant part) and complaints officer (post mortems). My area of coverage, apart from social and political issues, stretches as far as the subjects covered by the publications. In some cases I have become an instant, albeit superficial, expert, such as in science and technology, medicine and health, and occasionally (fortunately very rarely), sport."
"Now with no one asking me to write about sport, I have dropped that brief completely, running with topics that genuinely interest me. And I increasingly find that I am actually interest ed in science and technology, medicine and health, as well as social and political issues, not to mention the arts. I still find myself trying to finish two completely different stories, for instance, one about a struggle between professional integrity and the need for survival, the other about a pinhead-sized mite that nearly decimated the beekeeping industry in Irian Jaya. Life outside my media work goes on. Requests to read and speak to groups have not stopped coming in, my family and close friends have not abandoned me, and whenever I have a spare hour or two, I continue with my fiction writing. With a combination of luck and resilience, I survived, not completely unscathed, but not quite battered either."
Harry Komar, 49, who was a Tempo reporter from its first edition in 1970, is now chief editor of Gatra magazine. He was included in the team of three appointed by Tempo publisher Graffiti Press to negotiate with tycoon Bob Hasan over the possibility that former Tempo workers would be employed by a new magazine called Gatra.
Hasan promised not to interfere in editorial policy and to pay staff what they had been paid by Tempo. When the results of the negotiations were presented to Tempo's workers, 70 percent of them, mostly the non-editorial staff, agreed with the plan.
Looking back at the course of the events of the past year -- the banning of a towering magazine like Tempo, the ensuing dispute within the ranks of its employees and the consequent destruction of friendships, Harry expresses his conclusion with a Chinese proverb: "There is another sky beyond the sky."
Linda Jalil, a Tempo reporter since 1977, now with Gatra, feels indebted to Tempo for "making" her into a journalist.
"As a matter of fact, two months before the Tempo banning. But my husband told me postpone it until the end of the year. Then, the magazine was banned," said Linda.
At first, Linda, who is married to a businessman, intended to work for a TV station but switched to Gatra on the grounds that working for TV was too tiring for a mother of one. She also regarded the journalists at Gatra as the hard workers and the personalities she had been most comfortable with while at Tempo.
"I was among the last people to come aboard," she said.
She said that Bob Hasan had never interfered with Gatra's editorial policy and she has been delighted to see that her colleagues now pray more regularly than before.
Liston P. Siregar, 32, another Tempo veteran joins the Indonesian section of the BBC in London this month as a broadcaster.
"Last year was a big year for me. I got married last year and I lost my job," said the father of a two-month-old son.
He decided not to join Gatra and was among the former Tempo workers who filed a lawsuit against Minister of Information Harmoko over the banning.
He said his refusal to join Gatra was based on principle. However, he said that the decision to join or not to join Gatra was a matter for each individual.
"Yet, it is regrettable that some of our former colleagues who had previously been joint plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Harmoko withdrew their participation after joining Gatra, though some others did not do so," he said. (jsk/als/raw)