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MEDIA-INDONESIA: Children’s Newspaper a Breath of Fresh Air
By Richel Langit-Dursin - Asia Media Forum*
JAKARTA, Oct 3 (IPS) - In a country with more than 400 print media outlets, Indonesia’s first and only
children’s newspaper is a breath of fresh air.
Now on its third year, the mainly Indonesian-language ‘Berani’ (‘brave’)
believes in starting ‘em young when it comes to the love of reading. The 16-
page newspaper’s motto, after all, is "A nation that develops is a nation that
reads". Its target readers are elementary and junior high students.
"We decided to come up with this newspaper after finding out that Indonesian
children ranked very low among other countries in literacy, with only 30
percent understanding the material they read," Henricus Witdarmono, a 64-
year-old former teacher who is the newspaper’s founder and chief editor,
told the Asia Media Forum.
This 30 percent figure came from the 2003 Programme for International
Student Assessment (PISA) conducted by the Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development. PISA is a system of international assessments
that measures the capabilities of 15-year-olds in reading literacy,
mathematics literacy and science literacy every three years.
Based on the 2003 PISA results, Indonesian students did not do well in three
areas — reading, mathematics and science. Highly literate countries include
Finland, South Korea and Hong Kong, according to the study.
"By reading the news, children will continue to inquire. They will always ask
why," said Witdarmono, who founded the paper in April 2006 after working
for ‘Kompas’, Indonesia’s largest daily, for 16 years. "They will also be aware
of what is happening around them."
For being the first Indonesian paper for children, ‘Berani’ received an award
from the Indonesian Museum of Records.
Published from Monday to Friday, it has sections on foreign news, special
reports and sports, as well science and technology, literature and values. On
the last page, ‘Berani’ features profiles of interesting people. It employs seven
reporters, three artists and three designers.
"’Berani’ is an interesting newspaper to read. It has a lot of good news and
big news about the world," said Karla Margaret Ntalagewang, a Grade 2
student in Binus International School Simprug in South Jakarta, whose
elementary students subscribe to the paper.
"Young children like me don’t enjoy reading ‘Kompas’ and other Indonesian
newspapers because they are difficult to understand. We should be happy
because there is an Indonesian newspaper for us," stressed Karla, aged seven.
‘Berani’ articles are easy to understand and are written from the children’s
point of view. An editorial policy rules that each sentence should not be more
than 18 words.
Based on recommendations by a child psychologist, the paper does not
publish news about crimes, terrorism, accidents, killings and bombings.
"Berani is informative, but it has to make some improvements. It should
feature popular people such as leaders, scientists, and artists, not people
whose lives are not interesting," said Grade 4 Binus student Therese Ken
Maya.
A number of other schools use ‘Berani’ as reference and educational reading
material.
"It would be much better if Berani had more pages and increased the number
of articles written in English. It would also be more fun if we could read more
short stories in Berani," added 10-year-old Therese.
Witdarmono, however, stressed that the newspaper’s thickness is packaged
to suit children’s reading span of around 25 minutes in one sitting.
The Jakarta-based daily is sold at 2,000 rupiah (20 U.S. cents) per copy.
Subscription rate per month is 39,000 rupiah (4 U.S. dollars) for readers in
Java and 45,000 rupiah (4.7 U.S. dollars) for other places outside Java. The
newspaper is distributed nationwide, but 80 percent of its circulation is in
Greater Jakarta.
Unlike other newspapers, ‘Berani’ is sold in popular bookstores such as
Gramedia and Toko Gunung Agung, but not on the streets. "We cannot sell
‘Berani’ on the streets due to safety reasons. Parents won’t allow their
children to buy the paper from street vendors," said Witdarmono, who is also
the paper’s chief editor.
About 80 percent of copies go to subscribers, including schools and parents.
Together with ‘Kompas’ and other newspapers, ‘Berani’ is distributed in
numerous cities and towns, including Bandung in West Java, Semarang and
Yogyakarta in Central Java, Surabaya and Malang in East Java, Medan in North
Sumatra, Palu in Central Sulawesi, and Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan.
Besides articles on current issues, ‘Berani’ contains interesting quotes by
famous people, a definition of terms, comics and educational games such as
Sudoku, map reading, mazes and puzzles. Based on the newspaper’s survey,
readers’ favourite sections are the foreign and sports news.
‘Berani’ has just one page dedicated to English-language articles, uses font
size 11, and its size is a bit larger than the U.S. ‘Time’ magazine.
The English page was based on the request of state-owned schools, which
needed some English-teaching materials to improve the skills of students.
‘Berani’ also encourages children to contribute special reports or literary
articles — with payment — for its Tuesday and Friday editions.
Apart from accommodating student visits to its office, ‘Berani’ organises
workshops for teachers as well as students on writing reports, news and
features.
The newspaper educates students about current issues and events. In March
this year, prior to the Indonesian direct presidential election, it organised a
mock election among children to increase their awareness of democracy and
politics.
‘Berani’, however, is not spared from readers’ complaints. Islamic schools
returned copies of the paper’s edition that featured the scientific evolution of
man, because they do not believe in Darwin’s theory that human beings
originated from apes.
The newspaper also upset some of its Muslim readers when it published a
picture of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with Indonesian students on
Feb. 19. Some Muslim conservatives were concerned about the apparent
closeness of Indonesia with the United States.
The paper’s aim is to be read by more than 100,000 students in the country,
as awareness about the necessity to read remains low among Indonesian
children.
"Our competitor is not other newspapers and magazines, but the television.
Children prefer to watch TV instead of reading. We hope to change that
attitude," stressed Witdarmono, whose office in ‘Berani’ displays a huge
laminated poster that reads "Change, We Can".
*Asia Media Forum (http://www.theasiamediaforum.org)
(END/2009)
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