Editorial: New 'Post' portal

Sat, 04/26/2008 12:02 PM  |  Opinion

As we celebrate our 25th anniversary, one question on the minds of those managing The Jakarta Post is where we will be in the next 25 years.

The Post will definitely still be around, but we expect we will be providing services in a completely different format to our present daily newspaper.

Digital technology is changing people's lives dramatically, including the ways in which news and information are delivered and consumed. The Post will no doubt adapt to these new challenges, lest we perish as a media institution and company.

With newspaper readerships stagnating, and even declining in many so-called mature markets, and with the younger generations failure to take up the habit of "reading the paper", newspaper industries around the world are wondering how long these ink-on-paper products will be around.

This question is difficult to answer. One American writer, Philip Meyer, in his 2004 book The Vanishing Newspaper, predicts the last newspaper in the U.S. will be printed in 2043. With newsprint prices rising rapidly -- this year alone it has risen by 50 percent -- Meyer may have been too optimistic.

Newspapers around the world are finding it increasingly difficult to pass on these costs to their readers. With the increasing popularity of Internet-based news, people are expecting to get news and information free of charge. In some countries, including neighboring Singapore and Thailand, free newspapers funded entirely by advertisers have been introduced. This may extend the life of newspapers by a few more years, but it won't be enough to convince today's younger generation to start reading newspapers every day.

With this in mind, over the past year, The Jakarta Post has targeted to develop its future in the digital realm. The result, and as part of our 25th anniversary (Friday), we formally launched the new-look The Jakarta Post portal, which can be reached at www.thejakartapost.com.

This portal is more than just an extension of the previous online version of the paper. We have laid down foundations for the "information engine" that will be expanded as time goes on. The portal is intended to provide not only news and information, but also a range of other services including podcasts, videocasts and even e-transactions for the general public.

The Jakarta Post intends to exploit any opportunities the Internet may offer in terms of advancements in digital communication, and hopes to continue providing the community with a local and international news and information platform.

The newly launched portal is the result of a joint venture involving groups both inside and outside the newspaper. We retained former Far Eastern Economic Review journalist and banker Manggi Habir to head the portal project, working with our team of journalists and IT staff. We also employed Plasmedia, an Indonesian IT consultancy, to help develop and test the portal.

We have invested much money, time and human resources to prepare for the future of The Jakarta Post, and are looking to forge partnerships with as many organizations as possible. As such, we aim to maintain the portal as a provider and source of relevant daily information and services for the public.

We understand that one day, in the not-too-distant future, the portal will take over from the printed newspaper as the company flagship.

We are sticking to our core competencies, one of which is providing news and information in English. As our vision statement describes, The Jakarta Post aspires to become Indonesia's leading information engine that provides news and information, as well as a host of other services, in English.

The technology and the medium may be new, but people will still need the same services we have now -- those which keep them up to date.

Even in the era of Internet-based communications, someone must still be there to do the work that has traditionally been the domain of journalists: to gather and compile facts and information, verify their accuracy, sort out the essential from the non-essential, edit and package this in a way that is easy for people to understand (either through text or audio-visual means), and finally deliver it via a medium of the day. Today it is newspapers and radio/television. Tomorrow, it could all be online.

As we adapt to changes in the information age, we will not abandon the principles of good journalism that have been one of the keys to our success of the last 25 years. Even as we evolve with future technologies, The Jakarta Post is still investing heavily in training (and retraining) journalists.

We want to make sure we continue to nurture your support and patronage, and the only way to do this is by continuing to win your trust.

Trust and credibility are things one develops over time. You can't buy them overnight, but you can lose them in a second if you betray that trust.

This is something we will never do, more for our sake than yours.

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