Blogger Indonesia of the Week (48): Maverick Indonesia
When I lamented in a bit disappointment about the passive attitude of traditional media towards blogs and bloggers or you can call both as blogosphere, R.M., founder of Blog Indonesia aggregator advised me to be patient because he’s rest assured the time will come when Indonesian mainstream media will look into the blogosphere more seriously as far as the blogs trend and growth in the West keeps up. He actually wanted to remind me of this: our traditional media will follow whatever trend happening outthere sooner or later.
But he also warns Indonesian bloggers to keep quality, beside quantity, intact to attract many others to blog.I reproduce here his good comment:
I believe it is just a matter of time.
Indonesian blogs still have some growing up to do. Honesty, credibility and consistency are qualities that can only be established over a long period of time.
Blogs with such quality no doubt will shine and it would be foolish for the mainstream media not to pay attention to them.
He further said that, even New York Times learns from bloggers:
…
Today, the New York Times launched its site redesign, announced by a prominent editor’s note on the homepage. There’s a few lessons for bloggers to learn from the redesign, as well as some evidence that the Times itself has been learning from bloggers.
In other words, the more media people (and academia) go blogging, the more it will be followed by others and that’s the time when blogging become inseparable part of tools to communicate thought, news and ideas; beside the already existing tools like print media (newspapers and magazines), books and academic publication which are only accessible to certain circle of people.
It’s in this context that Maverick Indonesia’s presence in Indonesian blogosphere deserve duly attention. Maverick, as mentioned in the blog header, is “A Jakarta-Based PR Consultancy on the media, journalists PR, communications and life in Indonesia.” An institution which is very closely related to the media.
Wonderfully, this blog is a collaborative works, similar to Agoravox or Global Voices Online, although all the 15 contributors seem to be from the same office.
You can read a lot of interesting and quality stuff in the blog that covers various topics, mostly on news, journalism and current-affairs commentaries that you might not read in the print media.
Just to take a few example, see Maverick’s meet-up with Ulin Niam Yusron, a journalist from the weekly publication KONTAN. And see also its critical and unpriveleged-leaning commentary on Jakarta Governor, Sutiyoso’s speech which is one of my favorite piece. Maverick said:
Reading about his speech, I couldn’t help thinking that his “Acting Metropolitan” plea is geared more towards those who are less privileged in the city, while we know that some citizens who drive around in fancy new cars or big chopper bikes are also “kampungan”. Well, those who are less privileged tend to imitate or look up to the behaviors of those who are perceived to be at the higher social strata. So, perhaps in his final year of his second term, Bang Yos should be tougher in enforcing his rules and values to those who are supposed to know the rules already – those who have experienced the “better” cities in the world, and those who know how other citizens work together in making their city a better place to live.
So, as far as Indonesia goes, blog appears to be a converging point of two different world: a chatting and friendster culture on one hand and the journalism, traditional media and academia on the other. A meeting point that needs to be preserved and if it continues will surely create a bigger and unprecedented positive forces in the future.
While the former, with more edges in IT technology related stuff, can give some help to the latter on blog nitty-gritty, the latter can “teach” the former on how to make a good and quality content. I hope the former should learn to communicate with the latter and vice-versa, to make the “converging process” going smoother.