'Times' bookstore

Mohd Lazmi's letter complaining about Djakarta!'s review of his Times bookstore (March 3) touches on precisely the kind of principles of thoughtful, critical journalism we're trying to introduce through our magazine.

It also illustrates why Djakarta!'s attempts in this regard are an uphill battle. If Mr Lazmi felt our review was "biased", this is because it was unfavorable toward his business, not because there was anything wrong in it.

I know this, because upon reading his letter I personally spent two hours in his bookshop rechecking our reviewer's comments and measuring these against Mr Lazmi's claims.

Much as it may displease Mr Lazmi, I found our critic's comments to be completely accurate.

Times bookstore's layout is indeed disorganized; many books are in poor condition; staff are not as knowledgeable as Mr Lazmi seems to think; the selection is very random and extremely uneven; and we have book-for-book price comparisons (which we will gladly show Mr Lazmi or anybody else) showing why we wrote that Times is, on balance, pricier than some of its competitors.

I stand 100 percent behind our review. It was accurate, detailed, elaborated on its claims and, like all of Djakarta!'s reviews, was intended to serve our readers (and not to appease owners of businesses we review or to make everyone feel happy about everyone else).

Mr Lazmi's claim that our review was "an attempt to convince the public that Times bookstore is bad and QB World Books is the best" seems a bit paranoid, and perhaps is not a good way of handling constructive criticism.

In fact, in our debut issue (November 2000) we wrote a very mixed review on QB World Books, but have returned to the store, witnessed significant improvements, and in subsequent reviews of QB given credit where credit is due.

As our city inevitably, despite all its troubles, "goes global", the days of monopolies and "free rides" for businesses here will hopefully end. The arrival, for instance, of new innovative competitors like Aksara and QB, will force the entire book retail industry here to strive for higher standards.

In the meantime, Djakarta! will continue to scrutinize and to call a spade a spade. This is hardly "bias". Rather, it is merely being honest.

DANIEL ZIV

Editor-in-Chief

Djakarta! - The City Life Magazine