Warta Kota, The City Icon

(Published in July 2007 edition of ADOI magazine)

Its transformation drew controversy and criticism. But after eight years since its conception, Warta Kota is going on strong and establishes itself as the epitome of a city that never sleeps.


Noted actor/director Deddy Mizwar hops on a motorcycle taxi amid the hustle and bustle in the heart of Jakarta. He soon engages in a light-hearted and cheerful conversation on a series of urban issue with the driver, a perky character, before the two speed up, leaving a trace of laughter.
The writing on the TV screen is then read: Warta Kota, Nyambungnya Pas,Gayanya Jelas (Warta Kota, Connecting Well, Distinctive Style).
Switch to the radio, and yet another advertisement of Warta Kota daily emerges, using the native Jakartan (Betawi) culture, this time the song of legendary entertainer, the late Benyamin Suaib.
In the past two months or so, the daily newspaper which focuses on city coverage has been boosting its advertisements. Aside from the TV ad produced by Ideasphere ad agency and the radio commercial, the adapted TV ad are also apparent in a number of printed media, as well as banners on the street all over the city.
This has raised question of whether the trouble hitting printed media globally also impacts the city paper and creating financial crisis.
Warta Kota Chief Editor cum CEO cum General Manager, Dedy Pristiwanto, laughed off the accusation that the paper was going down the drain, unable to face harsh competition. On the contrary, he said, the paper was going on strong.
“People got it wrong. They think promotional effort should be pushed when a product is yet to be popular, or else when it starts to lose popularity. In this day and age, we can’t think like that anymore. Even when our product is on top of popularity, we need to keep promoting it,” said the 56 year-old veteran journalist.
The newspaper is now hitting 169,000 daily circulation. Quite a fantastic number for a publication that only covers the capital and Greater Jakarta, as many daily newspapers are struggling to reach even tens of thousand circulation amid harsh competition from TV, radio and the Internet.
Dedy assured that the circulation number was not a markup.
“The number does not come from us, but from the Australian-based Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC). They audit us every three months in a very strict and mind boggling process where we have to present every bit of document and data,” Dedy said, laughing.
“But this has resulted in a very accurate and reliable outcome, especially for advertisers. I think only Kompas and Warta Kota that use the ABC’s service. It’s not cheap, but for our credibility, money must not be a problem,” he added.
Image-wise, Warta Kota manages to create an impression of a non-violent city paper which not only caters people from the middle and lower bracket of the economy, but also caters middle and upper class who are looking for a city paper which does not exactly fit the criteria of ‘gutter press’ or ‘yellow paper’.
Tantri, 32, a staff at an international non governmental organization said Warta Kota was suitable for a commuter like her.
“I have tried reading several newspapers but it’s Warta Kota that suits a commuter like me the best,” said the resident of Bintaro who rides Bintaro-Tanah Abang executive train every day.
First of all, she said, it only cost Rp 1,000 (around US cent 10).
“It has light content, no heavy political stuff and the likes. Sure, it has crime stories as headlines, but it is not nauseating cause there’s no picture of people bleeding and stuff.
“The articles are short, light… It’s perfect for morning reading,” Tantri said.
Media observer Ignatius Haryanto from the Institute of Press and Development Studies (LSPP) praised Warta Kota for its successful marketing.
“All in all, as a city paper, it is quite successful and has become quite an icon. It has managed to reach wide audience, from public transportation drivers to young executives, and become their references,” he said.


When it all begins

A sister publication of largest national newspaper Kompas daily (circulation nearly 500,000), Warta Kota was launched in 1999 by the country’s media mogul Gramedia Group (KKG).
It recruited a number of young people for the newsroom.
“We were gathered in Puncak to formulate together the concept and the content of the paper. We were divided into groups, and were asked to ‘produce’ our own paper. It was very exciting,” said a desk editor who joined the paper from the early days as a reporter fresh from graduation.
From a small office in KKG ground in Palmerah, West Jakarta, the company then moved to an old, colonial building in Kota area, Central Jakarta, or known as the hub of electronic and entertainment businesses.
In order to build a solid and tough team, the paper once even moved the company meeting to an open area outside Jakarta in the middle of the night amid the hard pouring rain.
Dedy said the company aims at creating a healthy and conducive environment for all staff, a total of 111 people, with 70 of them occupies the newsroom.
“We emphasize on transparency and openness. Everyone may know how much the company earn, how much we spend, where the money allocated. As you can see, people can just come into my office whenever they like,” he said.
All editors, him included, he added, must not just sit around at the office and ordering reporters and editing their articles, but also going to the field and write.
Soon after, the paper emerged and filled the void of the city publication previously filled with papers that focused on bloody crime story with gory and graphic photos, to a cleaner one that catered to the middle and upper class market, the educated readers.
It filled with the information on urban issues, from lifestyle to transportation, and it was critical to local administration.
“It also became a venue for young educated to discuss everything that happened in the capital through the opinion pages,” Ignatius said.

The transformation

The clean and educated image, according to Dedy, turned out hard to sell. For the first two years, the circulation stucked at 12,000, which was really troubling to finance all expenses.
In a bid to boost the circulation, Gramedia (KKG) then moved Dedy – at that time led Fokus, a one-hour news program produced by Kompas and Indosiar private TV station – to take over the newsroom of Warta Kota in 2001.
He was already a veteran journalist, working in Kompas since 1978 before being moved to other publications inside KKG and Fokus Indosiar.
Together with his team, Dedy did the mapping of all problems from finance to news-related, of what worked and not for a city paper, gathering all inputs from any kind of people possible – from experts to common readers to agents.
An internal reformation then was conducted to make the company more efficient. The company then came to a conclusion that to be able to sell, the paper needed to do a transformation, in this case shifting its initial image from a clean and educated city paper to catch up with its ‘gutter press’ compatriots.
“We have to be realistic. What the majority of readers want are not clean and educated paper, that’s very segmented. Look at our television,” he said bluntly.
And so Warta Kota changed its focus in 2004. It employed huge, intriguing headlines on hot and juicy stories – mostly crime and celebrity news. Sports section was increased to a spread page and more celebrity news on the back pages.
“Yet, we still pay attention to journalism standard and ethic as well as good editorial style. Our army of copy editors are very strict when it comes to editorial style and languages.
“Instead of gory pictures, we apply graphic, like comic book. So, people would not get nausea,” Dedy said.
The paper also apply robust marketing strategy that include, aside of conventional advertisement, hiring street singers to sing tunes about Warta Kota, as well as recruiting college students to read the paper or discuss the content of the paper at bus shelters.
The transformation and marketing strategy proved efficient to boost the business. Data from the ABC showed that the circulation rose on average of 10,000 a month, from 38,000 copies at the beginning of the transformation to 169,000 at present.
“I don’t mind to brag, but you can check the agents, they called our paper ‘wonder baby’ or ‘drugs’, because it sells like hot cakes in no time,” said the friendly and warm Dedy, laughing.
“It already sold out at 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. We have our own team to check the sales every single day in the field. The rate of returned copies is only 3% to 7%,” he said.
Once in three to five months, the paper invite representatives of corporates and agencies to spend a night in a hotel for brainstorming and merely entertaining them. The guests will be brought to see the printing process and interview all employees.
As the result of the efforts, not only that the paper is able to face its head-to-head competitors like Berita Kota, Pos Kota, and regional papers like Radar Bogor, it also crosses the region and goes as far as West Java, Central Java, East Java and Sumatra.
In 2006, Warta Kota was among the winners of prestigious Superbrands award from Superbrands Council chaired by marketing guru Hermawan Kertajaya. Other brands awarded included Nokia, Toyota, Top One and Indofood.
The award was given for its rapid growth (the fastest growing newspaper), low percentage of returned copies, and the value it gave the readers, distributors and advertisers by presenting interesting, trusty and useful articles.

What now?

At the moment, Dedy said, Warta Kota plans to boost its promotion. But rather than grabbing young readers like other papers yearn to, Dedy said the promotional effort aimed at strengthening the brand image.
“Our strongest readers are on their 30s, people with high financial potential. It was also seen in the recent blood donor event, where 1,450 people showed up and 70% of them are young executives. Fourty percent of our readers, meanwhile, are housewives. They just love our entertainment section,” Dedy said, laughing.
The paper did not plan to increase the price of Rp 1,000, “unless there is a recession. But even then, we will prefer to save cost internally instead of putting the burden to our readers,” Dedy said.
Meanwhile, many people out of seeing the potential of Warta Kota, suggested that the paper improved its content and positioning.
Tantri the commuter said she wanted to see more information on what is happening in the city, beyond entertainment, crime and sports stories.
“There are too much portions on entertainment and crime. I want to know more about where to eat, what’s hot in town, what’s new.
“The education column is actually very well-written and informative, but unfortunately, it is marginalized,” she said.
Media observer Veven S.P. Wardhana said the paper should have been in the forefront in getting stories of what matters for Jakartans, such as transportation issues or public protest.
“It’s so easy actually to get information on when and where a public protest would be staged, as anyone who want to stagea protest should inform the police first. I notice how many local radios manage to do that.
“In the case of blackout, for instance, there should be in depth information about that, not just the bombastic aspect of an incident,” Veven said.
In terms of positioning, he said, Warta Kota has yet to have strict positioning, as it seems to be wanting to grab both lower and upper markets, while not optimizing them.
Meanwhile, Ignatius challenged the paper to again provide the venue for discussion as well as upholding its function as a city paper that has to be critical to local administration.
“The commercial aspect is more prominent right now. Sure, we have to be realistic, but we can’t just think of business only. There are many people from middle to upper class who yearn for a city publication that cater to their need for information. Jakartans have a lot of issues and problems, and there is no venue to talk about it. And that’s the market segment that can be worked on,” he said.
“Media should not just be dictated by market. Now that Warta Kota is settled and strong in terms of business, it must start to think how to dictate the market. And it’s not unprecedented. Look at Kompas, it’s a major player but not trapped in commercialization, but managed to come up with innovation.”

Labels: media

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