In the digital age, which is transforming journalism, quality content must remain the foundation of media companies’ efforts to attract readers, senior journalists have said.

“I still believe that content, in the end, is king. If we are able to produce quality content, we will consequently see a large number of readers coming to our platforms,” Ninuk Mardiani Pambudy, the chief editor of Indonesia’s biggest daily newspaper Kompas said in Jakarta on Thursday.

She was addressing an audience of hundreds at a regional conference held by the AJI titled “The Biggest Challenge Facing Journalism in the Digital Era”.

Ninuk admitted that people’s increasing interest in reading digital content, rather than print media, had significantly reduced Kompas’ circulation in recent years.

To cope with this digital disruption, the company decided to pursue a progressive transformation by developing digital platform kompas.id.

In its second year, kompas.id has attracted roughly 500,000 registered users, Ninuk said.

She was optimistic this figure would grow as the company’s continued its efforts to provide quality content, which she claimed was hard to find on other digital platforms.

“Digital platforms provide readers with ‘voices’, as well as ‘noises’. Our challenge, as media companies, is to bring voices to readers over the many noises,” Ninuk said.

“And that’s definitely not an easy matter,” she added.

She further highlighted that, despite every challenge and obstacle, media companies should hold on tight to the basic principles of journalism, such as being accountable, independent and objective, among other things.

The Jakarta Post’s editor-in-chief Nezar Patria, who also served as a panelist at the conference, echoed Ninuk’s sentiments on the importance of maintaining “the excellence of journalism” in the digital era.

He strongly believed that media companies that provided readers with quality journalism would be able to survive. He cited the success story of American newspaper The New York Times, which has more than 4 million digital subscribers currently — double its 2.1 million print subscribers.

“Several journalism studies have suggested that there’s a concern [among the public] that the quality of media products will decline as companies struggle to find a way to survive during the digital disruption,” Nezar said, arguing that such media-industry players could actually survive without sacrificing their principles by innovating, or simply emulating the success stories of other companies.

Media companies, Nezar said, could follow the various new media industry models, starting from subscription systems to membership.

He highlighted that even though transformation was inevitable, maintaining the standards of quality journalism was
possible.

“Alternatives are aplenty. It’s your call to choose the business model that suits you the most,” he said.

AJI chairman Abdul Manan said separately that mass digitization had created the new model of “clickbait journalism”, in which so-called online-journalists produce clickbait articles regardless of the news value.

“It could be dangerous for the media industry if this model persists in the long run. It will likely lower the standards of journalism, as well as the public’s trust in the media,” he said, adding that maintaining the quality of journalism was essential.

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