Blogger Indonesia of the Week (50): Ong Hock Chuan
To be honest, I am a bit doubtful about mentioning his true name as I see his current insightful blog does mention only his blog name. That makes me hesitant for quite long time to give an introduction here regarding his blog. But after I read his latest piece in the Jakarta Post here, I know he just forget or doesn’t care about mentioning his true identity in his blog rather than intentionally hide it.
A few months back, a person named Ong Hock Chuan emailed me thanking me for my comment in his blogspot blog (now it seems to be deleted and moves on to self-hosted wordpress). He seems to start learning to blog very quickly and want know more about blogging.I thought then that he’s just a simple person like many others who start showing interest to the power of blog and blogging and want to start blogging himself.
I was wrong. He is not an ordinary blogger. He is a former journalsit-turn-businessman and still writes passionately and regularly in conventional media like the Jakarta Post.
Needless to say what kind of blog he’s got and what kind of content his blog carries. And needless to say how personally happy I am and so should all Indonesian bloggers to have him blogging regularly. Why we should be happy upon their presence?
Simply put this: the Indonesian bloggers will never be no where near a kind of influence the conventional media has, until and unless the person like Ong and others like him are also engaging in blogging activities.
No intention at all to belittle the role of ordinary bloggers like myself and you. Blog is a citizen media anyway. But it’s a person like him, Yosef Ardi, etc to put a few who will make the Indonesian blogospere presence felt by wider and more influential audience. Because these people know much and they know how to attract attention as far as making news is concerned.
See for example his post on Defense Minister, Juwono Sudarsono’s blog which got some attention from other world bloggers like “Shel Israel of Naked Conversations, Jeremy Wagstaff of Loose Wire and Pablo Halkyard of The World Bank.”
Or have a look at his post about the Jakarta Post which cause some heated and contentious debate from some of the Post journalists.
I personally want to congratulate him and wish him luck for his newly-found passion of blogging and hope that others will follow suit soon.
I firmly believe that one day political and current affairs blog like his own, Yosef Ardi, Indonesia Anonymus and Sarapan Ekonomi and some few others will attract as many visitors as Dailykos.com or instapundit.com just to name a few of American political bloggers in which their daily visitors are above 100K a day. They should be the forefront faces of Indonesian bloggers to the world.
And what ordinary bloggers like me and you can do to contribute to their growth? Simply this: put a link-back to their blogs not only to add up their traffics but also on top of it all as a show of support and camaraderie.