By Eddy Suprapto
JAKARTA: The economic crisis has caused a landslide impact on the industry in Indonesia. Until May 2025, the layoffs reached 24,867 people.
In the media industry, the layoffs of journalists from online, print, and television media in the last five years of declining income have reached 1,200 journalists, according to May 2025 figures.
A new era has arrived when journalists started losing their bargaining power in a more efficient production process. Platform technology is shifting conventional media. The ways of working and production system are changing. The editorial room is being replaced by algorithms. Machines are eating up the journalists’ production process.
Journalists are the product of a profession that has changed the world for centuries with the power of narrative and visual imagination.
In their work, journalists follow strict professional rules, obey ethics, abide by humanitarian laws, and observe state regulations.
Journalists are the best professionals in the development of modern industry. They are the biological children of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, until the era of John Logie Baird and Philo Farnsworth who discovered television technology.
In our modern times, technology has developed rapidly, and the discovery of satellite and internet technology has reduced the distance of coverage, making it easier for TV journalists to work and produce.
However, in the digital era, this “best generation” has been sidelined and then thrown out of the production system because their profession is no longer “buyable”.
They master reporting, code of ethics, verification. But now the job market no longer absorbs them. Machines are faster and cheaper. Platforms are stronger and more monopolizing. Technology has created unpaid ghostwriters, and machines can now write market reports, political news, and debate summaries.
The media business model has collapsed. Advertisements go to Meta and Google. Readers are too lazy to pay the paywall. Changes in public taste have occurred and the new reality on the ground is that what is viral is more important than what is right and what is fast is more important than what is accurate!
The journalism profession is not extinct, formal journalist institutions are replaced by informal functions. But the journalists who survive form networked truth-telling as a force. Loyal journalists remain in their own channels like Ronin walking with their own sword without a master.
