Indonesian literary magazine Horizon has stopped publishing its printed publication and will instead produce only online content.
The announcement was made Tuesday at an event in Jakarta to mark on the magazine’s 50th anniversary.
“In order to embrace advanced technology, Horizon’s print publication has become Horizon Online as of today,” one of the magazine's co-founders, Taufiq Ismail, told tempo.co on Tuesday.
Taufiq said the print magazine was very expensive to publish and the readership was not as big as it was online. He pointed out that such conversions were happening not only in Indonesia but also globally.
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Horizon Online started up a few years ago. The idea to establish it came from Amin Sweeney, a linguist of the Malay language. Taufiq said he did not fully understand publishing online at the time and was not too excited about it either. But Sweeney assured him that publishing online was important for the future.
“We therefore created Horizon Online. It’s been developed and keeps developing until today,” said Taufiq.
Sweeney led the editorial team of Horizon Online until he passed away, after which the website was idle until Sastri Sunarti took the helm.
Horizon magazine was first published in 1966 and was founded by Mochtar Lubis, PK Ojong, Arief Budiman, Zaini and Taufiq Ismail.
Renowned Indonesian poet and Muslim scholar Emha Ainun Nadjib, who attended the anniversary event, said the editorial team had taken the right step in converting to an online publication to expand readership and engage with the millennials as they were the ones currently dominating the culture. “They’re IT-addicts,” he said. (kes)
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