Authority in Blog and Media
In order to be able to write an op-ed article and get published in print media, you gotta have a sort of authority in the field you are writing on. The authority, however, won’t guarantee your piece to appear in the intended newspaper, there’re some other things which the editors will take into consideration to publish you piece including the paper “policy” on certain issues.
This particular media “policy” makes some op-ed columnists/writers force to adjust whenever they write an op-ed piece to a particular newspaper. A piece intended to be sent to KOMPAS, for example, should be a bit different – in style, angle analysis, etc – against a piece intended to be sent to REPUBLIKA, Media Indonesia, etc. In short, you need to watch and look into every style of any particular newspapers before you send your own. In short, it’s the writers who should adjust to the print media policy; not the other way round. In other words, an op-ed writer obliged to be more pragmatic in expressing their opinions in order to be published.
And that’s one of the reasons, an idealist intellectual like Yudi Latief, as he told me the other day, prefers to write a book instead of an op-ed piece unless and until a particular media requests him to do so which means in this case it’s he, not the editors, who set the term, style and angle analysis of the article. This ideals approach of a few intellectuals finally cost them their popularity: how many people read their books or their piece in international journal/publication, anyway? At the same time, Indonesian people needs to be enlightened by their good piece of writings in the form of op-ed piece, the most accessible medium to the mass.
Fortunately now we have in front of us a new technology called blog. Here, we can enjoy writing what we like to write. Everybody is editor. Blog is certainly the most effective tools for every citizen: the intellectuals, the writers, the laymen, anyone who has access to the internet.
And in the blog everybody has the “authority.” The editors, if there should be any, are the readers. The judgement from the readers count. And that what makes a blog interesting and that’s why I urge everybody, including Indonesian intellectuals, to blog to express everything they simply can’t do in a conventional media. It’s ok to me to blog in Bahasa Indonesia, yet if you have a bit mastery in English, why should shy away from doing it?