Maverick Indonesia

KoranInternet, new on-line news portal

The battle for Indonesian news in cyberspace has hotted up with news portal KoranInternet joining into the fray to compete with others such as detik.com, KCM and others. KoranInternet fired its first salvo last Thursday, on 15 November, by placing colored advertisements about a quarter of page in Kompas announcing their launch.

KoranInternet appear to target mainly businessmen, young executives and government officials. The content covers mainly Financial & Business news and political issues locally as well as globally. There is also a special .com on the right hand side of the webpage reserved for Kwik Kian Gie the former Coordinating Minister of Economy, Finance and Industry under the Megawati administration.

Kwik, who used to be a newspaper columnist before becoming a minister, returns to his role of critic with his opinion and analysis on current issues on policies or politics that affect the economy of the country.Presented in an open discussion style, Kwik’s critical opinions in this column has already attracted many comments from readers.

The main page of KoranInternet has a simple-clean layout, making it easier for readers to read without the distraction of pop usp or moving feature which we usually find on other news web page, detik.com being the main culprit. Even the two advertising banners that appear when you first enter to the site did not overlap with the news page. I guess koraninternet has thought better than to irritate readers who are looking for news rather than advertisements.

We welcome KoranInternet and wish them all the best in the road ahead. If all goes well with this news portal we should probably be seeing them add more coverage. Personally, I’d like to see them cover more culture topic as Indonesia is so culturally rich.

By : Dian Kartikasari