The front page of The Jakarta Post on July 9, 2009
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Type | Daily newspaper |
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Format | Broadsheet |
Owner(s) | PT Bina Media Tenggara |
Founded | April 25, 1983 (12431 issues) |
Headquarters | Jl. Palmerah Barat 142–143 Jakarta, Indonesia |
ISSN | 0215-3432 |
Website | www.thejakartapost.com |
The Jakarta Post is a daily English language newspaper in Indonesia. The paper is owned by PT Bina Media Tenggara, and the head office is in the nation's capital, Jakarta.
The Jakarta Post was started as a collaboration between four Indonesian media under the urging of Information Minister Ali Murtopo and politician Jusuf Wanandi. After the first issue was printed on 25 April 1983, it spent several years with minimal advertisements and increasing circulation. After a change in chief editors in 1991, it began to take a more vocal pro-democracy point of view. The paper was one of the few Indonesian English-language dailies to survive the 1997 Asian financial crisis and currently has a circulation of about 40,000.
The Jakarta Post also features both a Sunday and Online edition, which go into detail not possible in the daily print edition. It is targeted at foreigners and educated Indonesians, although the middle-class Indonesian readership has increased. Noted for being a training ground for local and international reporters, The Jakarta Post has won several awards and been described as being "Indonesia's leading English-language daily". The Jakarta Post is a member of Asia News Network.
The Jakarta Post was the brainchild of Information Minister Ali Murtopo and politician Jusuf Wanandi. Murtopo and Wanandi were disappointed at the perceived bias against Indonesia in foreign news sources. At the time, there were two English-language dailies, the Indonesia Times and Indonesian Observer. However, due to negative public perception regarding the existing papers they decided to create a new one. In order to ensure credibility, the two agreed to convince a group of competing newspapers (the Golkar-backed Suara Karya, the Catholic-owned Kompas, the Protestant-owned Sinar Harapan, and the weekly Tempo) to back the nascent paper. It was hoped to become a quality English-language paper, similar to The Straits Times in Singapore, the Bangkok Post in Thailand, and the New Straits Times in Malaysia.