How Kompas Gramedia Stands Tall as Indonesia’s Media Giant

Kompas.com new logo unveiled

Indonesians are familiar with Kompas Gramedia, a 48 year-old media brand that is trusted by many in the country thanks to the Kompas newspaper, which remains an important source of news.

Besides newspapers, Kompas Gramedia also runs other print media from magazines to tabloids. It owns Gramedia book stores as well as radio and TV channels. On top of that, the company is also venturing into hospitality and education sectors. Kompas Gramedia is touted as the leading media company in Indonesia through its variety of strong media channels.

Despite its huge media influence and success, Kompas hasn’t rested on its laurels. The company understands that it has to change with the times as more people are starting to consume news online. Its first attempt into the online space gave birth to the first online version of Kompas in 1997.

Edi Taslim, who is now the digital group director at Kompas Gramedia, said that while Kompas.com was set up as a separate company, it is nonetheless just a companion to the Kompas newspaper in 1997. Kompas.com will republish news that is found on its print version and doesn’t run any of its own stories. Prior to joining Kompas Gramedia’s digital division, Edi, who joined the group straight after he graduated from college, was an editor-in-Chief at CHIP Media (which is also under Kompas Gramedia) and helped Kompas Gramedia expand its business in Malaysia and Singapore.

Edi Taslim, digital group director at Kompas Gramedia

In 2007, he was asked to lead Kompas.com as general manager with about seven to ten people in his team. In 2008, Kompas.com restructured and relaunched with its own editorial team and the site finally began to run its own stories. It also has its own business team. While freedom from Kompas (the printed newspaper) is great, it also means that Kompas.com is managing its own profit and loss statements. It is on its own to prove that an online media could generate revenue and stay afloat. Edi told me:

In 2008, the board of directors decided that Kompas.com has to be a real online news site instead of just a companion of Kompas daily. We don’t wait for print anymore. In the last ten years, it was just a companion of daily and that didn’t work because people want to read news real-time.

In a print company, I think the challenges is always the online culture. It’s totally different in terms of how we work and report. That’s the biggest challenge since [Kompas.com] started. So we really have to do an extreme approach. Coming from a traditional media company it is difficult to change the mentality and culture of online journalism.

At Kompas.com, Edi first had to ensure that the team had an online-first culture and mentality. He explained that writing for newspapers, you cover what’s important regardless of whether or not it’s interesting. Online, people click on interesting news that may not necessarily be important. For example, celebrities fighting on Twitter isn’t important but it is interesting for a lot of online readers. The way reporters write their headlines and stories online has to be different than writing for a newspaper. Courses were introduced to help the reporters learn and adapt to the online world better. Edi explained:

In print, you go to an event and come back to write for the 6:00 PM deadline. In online, before you go for an event, you have to create a teaser for the event. Once you arrive you create another piece of news. During the event you have another article submitted online and after the event you have a post-event article.

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