Unspun

The Point vs The Post


The Jakarta Post.com vs


Unspun finally received copies of The Point today, but only after yours truly had to sms Riris with a “where the hell can I get a copy of your paper?” message. Riris made good though and soon Unspun found two days’ worth of the Point delivered on the doorstep.

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It turns out that at this stage of the paper’s development, it is available only to the diplomatic corps. Soon, however, it will hit the newstands and then the hoi polloi like Unspun would be able to buy it for Rp 4,000 per copy.

So what’s the new paper like? Well, ‘s tabulated the lead stories in the main pages for you, dear reader, to make your own decision. Post a comment to tell us if you think that The Point will be able to make a difference in your reading habits or its same old same old all over again.

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3 responses to “The Point vs The Post”

  1. treespotter Avatar
    treespotter

    frankly, what i’ve seen of the paper, i’m not too sure that it will provide substantial quality upgrade from JP. Today’s headline – page 1 – in JP had “Sexual Minorities Protest Bylaws.” which i found impressive even for the rock bottom JP. The copy paste column (other people refer to it as the op-ed page) features a column from a local Japanese paper, totally irrelevant. Donald Duck can do better than that. The Point is still fresh and exciting, but i’m not holding my breath. I got a gut feeling that they’re very much capable of screwing this one up. Papers arent’ easy, not these days, not in this neighborhood.

    I’m finding this shit quality in English publication to be very mindboggling.

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  2. Duncan Graham Avatar
    Duncan Graham

    What’s more to The Point is the quality of English, the ratio of original local stories to wire service reports, the number of paid ads (if any)and the level of intellectual debate. Can you oblige? If you find it difficult getting copies in Jakarta, how about the backblocks? Or isn’t it meant to be a national rag? Cheers Duncan Graham (Surabaya)

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  3. Kay Avatar
    Kay

    In my office we keep a very close eye on the local media – we subscribe to all the local papers and take around 10 copies of the Jakarta Post every day. So when I heard The Point had launched I was naturally interested in seeing some sample copies and getting some subscription forms. Should have been easy, right? New paper wants to pump up circulation to help leverage its ad rates, etc. Er, apparently not. I texted somebody at editorial, who replied that they’d passed my request to circulation. Without providing any contacts at circulation for me to follow up. Okay. Three days later – zilch. And the editorial contact doesn’t respond to my queries as to how we can subscribe to their paper. Odd pr strategy to say the least. But when by chance I got a copy of the Thursday Oct 5 edition of The Point I realized why they’re so strictly limiting its circulation. Basically the paper, based on Thursday’s edition at least, is a mess. The main front page story on Bank Indonesia inflation policy had the lede from a completely different story. Impressive. The paper is riddled with “funny” English – I suspect they’ve gone cheap on quality native English editorial staff. The font is also peculiar – a mix of two or even three fonts on one page, which is anything but pleasing to the idea. Likely affordability rather than quality dictated page design. Granted it’s early days – a paper is a massively complex and exhausting endeavour and teething problems are to be expected. But putting aside Thursday’s Point, I was struck by a strong sense of deja vu – Indonesia Daily anyone? I note they’re running the same cheesy “Judge Bao” comic strip at the late ID, which no doubt goes down a storm at the local Chinese cram schools, but isn’t quite what you’d expect of an aspirant international-standard paper. But the bottom line is Indonesia needs a second quality English-language paper to compete with the Post, so fingers crossed The Point is a journalistic ugly duckling that may yet become a swan….

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