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.
The golden days of print media: Cikapundung print market and distribution center
Change Size
Late night: One of the Cikapundung print market newsagents watches his cardboard-lined makeshift newspaper stall at the northern end of Jl. Dr. Ir. Sukarno, Bandung. (JP/Anindito Ariwandono) (JP/Anindito Ariwandono)
W
em>With demand for print media collapsing in the face of digitalization, we take a closer look at the lives of some of the people in Bandung’s once-largest print market and distribution center.
At 4 a.m., way before daybreak, stacks of newspapers and magazines line the pavements of Jl. Ir. Sukarno in Bandung, West Java. Formerly named Jl. Cikapundung Timur, the area has been used as an informal distribution center and a market for domestic printed media since the late 1970s, where newsagents, peddlers and newspaper delivery men gather before dispersing into every nook and cranny of the city.
In the golden age of print media, the bustle would last until noon, when some newspapers’ afternoon editions came fresh off the presses and were dropped off in bulk at the distribution center.
Nowadays, the market is usually dead by 9 a.m., at the latest, with most newsagents running out of their stock of newspapers and magazines and starting to tidy up not long after 7:30 a.m. The newsagents running out of stock of newspapers, however, does not necessarily indicate that the market is doing remarkably well.
Toppling demand
Under the barrage of the internet and the advent of smartphones—which maximizes the accessibility of online media—especially once they became ubiquitous during the last decade, the demand for print has been in steady decline. With both deteriorating advertising revenue and a loss of readership, the industry had been struggling even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
