TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Tyler Brûlé: Following his own lead
(Courtesy of Monocle
Change Size
(Courtesy of Monocle.) (Courtesy of Monocle.)
(Courtesy of Monocle.)Tyler Brûlé arrives amid the early morning hush at a Jakarta hotel. While the hotel itself is only beginning to stir, the Canadian himself is in a bit of a hurry.
A round of media interviews awaits, plus a few meetings with government bigwigs and ad partners, before an early-evening cocktail gathering for subscribers to his London-based magazine, Monocle, and the even bigger schmooze-fest of the after-party.
On this morning, the 44-year-old is in a blue blazer, pinstriped shirt and a pair of knee-length shorts. While the get-up may initially appear incongruous in one of Jakarta's tweediest five-star hotels, it is only befitting the urbane Brûlé, especially as founder and editor in chief of the publication that is a hit with hipsters from New York City to Singapore (he keeps the attire for the cocktail party).
It's a whirlwind Asian tour: after his 24-hour+ stop in Jakarta, he will head to Manila, and then to Taipei. It's his first time of any significance in Jakarta; previously, he had only seen the city in passing on his way to Bali. But after a spotting a funky Jakarta-made T-shirt in Singapore, and finding out about the Bright Spot market of Indonesian young creative talents, Monocle did a report on the event.
'Every year we sit down with the distribution manager and look at the markets that are emerging, and this year, it was Turkey, Thailand and Indonesia. It was really the first time that we saw Indonesia coming into the picture,' the bespectacled Brûlé says after ordering a cappuccino and mineral water.
He has already earned his stripes as a fly-by-night Jakartan with a leg-numbing one and a half-hour traffic jam on the way to dinner. He also had a close encounter of a more amusing kind with couples laden down with shopping bags on the flight from Singapore to the capital (both featured in his tales-from-the-road description of his visit to the city in his weekly Financial Times column).
For all his casual sophistication, Brûlé is someone willing to go against the flow, from proudly resisting the trend to bare all in the voyeuristic world of social media to establishing Monocle six years ago, even if the death knell was sounding for print media amid the push to go online (he also ranks on the list of the world's most powerful gay people; he does not mind discussing the issue, but points out that he is not a gay editor, but an editor who happens to be gay).
For Brûlé, it's a case of rumors of print media's demise have been greatly exaggerated, except in the US.
'I think many companies have obituaries for their print editions stashed in a draw somewhere, but not so fast perhaps. Apart from America, print is not dead. Take Japan, online is a very small part of the publications there,' he said.
'Look at Newsweek [which switched exclusively to an online edition in January 2013], it's no longer part of the conversation.'
The August edition, he notes, will be the best ever in terms of ad revenue for the magazine, which adheres to the cover line, 'a briefing on global affairs, business, culture & design'. He adds that Korean multinational Samsung committed to multipage editorial tie-ins without online figuring as a consideration.
Brûlé believes that it may be time to take one's foot off the gas a tad, or at least tone down the all-or-nothing view of embracing online.
'There is something to be said for how people view us from what we read. A magazine or newspaper represents who you are, but a gadget does not.'
Brûlé, the son of a football player and an artist, developed a love of magazines during what he calls a 'comfortable' Canadian upbringing. Magazines were found throughout his home or at his Aunt Anita's, including European editions (his mother's Estonian family was part of the migration from Europe after World War II).
He became fascinated by the process of modern journalism, especially the technicalities of relaying stories to newsrooms around the world. He admired the late TV anchor Peter Jennings, a Canadian who made the transition to the big league of US nightly news broadcasts, and his first ventures into journalism were in international news channels.
He segued into becoming a freelance writer, enchanted by having his story picked up and considerable earnings from landing a juicy story.
But his life changed when he was shot and seriously injured while on assignment in Afghanistan in 1994. It was a long and difficult process of recovery, not only physically but also emotionally.
Brûlé calls them dark days; at age 26, he had to learn to use his right hand over his natural but maimed left one, and also rethink the somewhat thankless lot of freelancers injured on the job.
The recuperation also meant he spent a lot of time reading and, as he has said in past interviews, he found himself dismayed by the standard, play-it-safe magazines on the market. It motivated him to start the Wallpaper, the ground-breaking, ultra-fashionable style magazine of the mid-1990s.
It was his training ground for Monocle, the magazine he says he always wanted to produce in exploring the hip happenings in all corners of the world.
To some, his love of print may make him seem like a throwback to another time, coupled with his adamant resistance to the veneration of social media; you will not catch him tweeting his thoughts.
'I think that if you have built up your brand over a century, or even over decades, you cannot put everything out there. There still has to be some mystery behind it, the thrill of the chase, instead of being on and open all the time,' said Brûlé, adding that Monocle has strict rules on its employees using social media.
'I want my reporters to focus on the job they are doing, not focusing on Twitter or what their peers are doing on social media. When you have a network anchor asking viewers to follow them back, it's about following them, not the station. So you have this thing of people building up their own name '¦ Is the journalist any more important than the person who distributes the magazine in Osaka?'
Does he see himself as voice in the wilderness of 'F' icons and bluebirds, albeit a very successful one?
'Or are we a voice of opposition or a voice of reason? I hope so. Owning 75 percent of this business, every success is of me and the team. But the failure is mine, too, because I have to make decisions for the business and I have to shoulder that. As a voice of reason, we show people that there is an alternative way of doing things.'
