When Media Indonesia was first published in January 1970, it was a weekly newspaper with only four pages and very limited reporting. In 1976, it was enlarged to eight pages. In 1988, its founder, Teuku Yousli Syah, joined forces with Surya Paloh, the former owner of the newspaper Prioritas, and formed a new company, PT Citra Media Nusa Purnama. This marked the birth of the new Media Indonesia under the direction of a new management team. The newspaper was, at that time, run from an office in Gondangdia, Central Jakarta. The new management set about improving the content and appearance of the paper, and its circulation grew rapidly. Media Indonesia now became available throughout the archipelago. Since 1995, Media Indonesia's operations have been located at the company's own offices in Kedoya, West Jakarta. In this building, all of the newspapers's function are assembled under one roof : editorial and reporting, management, printing, and even leisure facilities of the employees. Media Indonesia currently employs around 600 people. In addition to Media Indonesia, the company also prints a number of other newspapers and tabloids on a contract basis.
The market
Sadly, Indonesia cannot be described as a nation of readers. While the population is around 220 million and the literacy rate is relatively high, only around five million newspapers are printed each day, according to recent estimates. The flipside of this sorry statistic is the opportunity it offers newspaper publishers to establish a product identity and build a loyal readership base now, in order to grow in line with the inevitable increase in newspaper readership over the coming years. With a daily print run of 175,000 to 250,000 copies, Media Indonesia is the second largest circulation broadsheet newspaper in the country. According to AC Nielsen, Media Indonesia raised its market share by one percentage point to 18 percent in 2003. Media Indonesia's readers are drawn from a board spectrum of socio-economic groups; this is reflected in the wide range of themed tabloid-sized supplements that accompany the newspaper several times a week. Each of these tabloids is aimed at a different audience, such as bankers, teachers, students, homeowners, and housewives. There are also some regional variations in the tabloid published, to accommodate local tastes, priorities, and events.
