Wall Street Journal: Indonesia's Economic Growth and Media Potential Brings Us Here

In case you haven't heard, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) just launched a site dedicated to Indonesia with locally produced content presented in Indonesian. DailySocial took the time to have a chat with the Editor in Chief of WSJ Asia, Almar Latour, about its expansion plan in the country. Previously the WSJ launched Indonesia realtime blog as part of its Southeast Asia realtime blog network

The first question that came up to people's minds when they heard that WSJ is expanding to Indonesia is "WHY?" Out of all places in the region, why did WSJ decide to double down its interest in Indonesia?

According to Latour, WSJ has seen this pattern of economic growth in Asia and Indonesia today reminds him of China ten years ago when WSJ decided to enter the Chinese market. Economic growth is basically the main reason behind WSJ's expansion plan to the country. Latour also added the fact that Indonesia is currently under the spotlight from big foreign economies for a potential investment, which makes news from Indonesia more appealing for WSJ's International readers.

We all know that WSJ is known for its strength in the financial sector, hence the name - Wall Street Journal, but the team said that it will not only focus on the financial and business news for its Indonesian site. Other categories such as Lifestyle and Technology will also be pushed for its Indonesian site in order to gain a wider-range of readership, which also puts WSJ in competition with other local news sites.

When asked about the local competitors, Latour stated the fact that each news portal has its own differentiation and that WSJ is bringing a unique approach in its editorial strategy. Of course at the end of the day, all these news sites are going to fight for advertisers' money but it seems that the WSJ team is pretty confident about what value it's bringing into the media landscape.

One of the first things I noticed when I found out that WSJ launched its Indonesian site, is that it's importing content from sister sites, in this case, AllThingsD. I've been a huge fan of AllThingsD for a very-very long time and it interests me to know the thinking behind AllThingsD to become one of the first content imported to WSJ's Indonesian site. According to Latour, technology is something that affects many people anywhere in this world and it's one of WSJ's approaches to bring tech-related content to new market because it's simply relevant to most markets.

Another reason, Latour added, is the relationship between WSJ and the tech communities of New York and Silicon Valley. There's no question about AllThingsD's authoritative power in Silicon Valley and Latour feels that it would be appropriate to bring those contents to Indonesian readers as well in order to widen WSJ's circle of readership in the new market.

"The green light from HQ for Indonesian expansion came almost 6 months ago", and immediately they started recruiting people to further operate the Indonesian site, Latour said. "We're currently trying to gather feedback as much as possible from the market and we'll adapt to it as fast as we can", he added.