Update: The paper is to be called Jakarta Globe and it would be housed at the Aston, the group of apartments/office space owned by Lippo and which houses Globe Asia. It is also confirmed by Joe Cochrane himself that he will be the Deputy Editor
Having had a taste of the power and glory, real or perceived, from owning a business publication in the form of the Globe Asia, James Riyadi is now going full bore in setting up his new English-language business and general affairs daily. Nobody seems to know what the paper is to be called although some have speculated that it may be called the Globe Daily. At any rate let’s, for convenience sake, refer to it as Globe Daily.
The soon to be published paper has taken a half page advertisement in Kompas today announcing that is is looking for a chief political correspondent, specialist reporters in the fields of defense, the legislature, office of the president, environment and health and the Jakarta goverment and its related issues. In business it is looking for specialist reporters in finance, the capital market, infrastructure mining and natural resources, trade, labor and consumer affairs.
It is also looking for 10 general reporters, 5 lifestyle reporters, 2 sports reporters and 10 designersFrom its requirements it looks like James has learned from his mistakes at Globe Asia and has other people thinking about an interactive strategy to go with the paper. When he launched Globe Asia the people running it were so clueless they did not even think of registering a domain name or checked who were using http://www.globeasia.com (see here).
This time around the reporters, said the advertisement, will be required to file for the web and also do standup reports for the video component of the website.
All fine and well, but one wonders where they will get all that talent. The Jakarta Post as it is is already groaning from the difficulty of finding people who can put two sentences together, let alone be able to report accurately, investigate and write well.
They could aim to recruit from the wires, but which decent journalist in their right mind in Indonesia (as opposed to Hong Kong where the Hong Kong Ronin roam free and desperate) would work for a Riyady paper? How would their reporting values mesh with James’s business, political and religious interests? And how long would the paper last?
Still, these are desperate times for print journalists and any job that promises a salary i not to be scoffed at. And since we humans are all hardwired to be optimistic there i alway that slim chance that things would work out and Jams prove to be a publisher par excellence, and the paper would go on the be the paragon of journalism in Indonesia.
Perhaps it is this optimism that has seduced normally skeptical hard-nosed journalists such as Lin Neumann, Plott(?) and, as the goss mill in the JFCC goes, Joe Cochrane to sign up in the latest Riyady venture?
Unspun hopes that they are right because this town could do with some competition where English language newspapers are concerned since the last pretender to the throne, The Point, was pointless from the start.
Unspun 
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