Ismira Lutfia – Print media companies in the United States are falling by the wayside in the face of stiff competition from more technologically advanced media. But the changing times haven't affected Indonesian print media as drastically as in the West, local media experts say. At least, not yet.

"There will be fewer conventional media outlets, but I don't think they will become obsolete," said Roy Suryo, a media and technology expert who was speaking at a seminar titled Toward the Death of Print Media.

Officials of various media outlets who attended the talk organized by the Indonesian Journalists Association and the Press Council said they recognized the shift to online news material by Indonesian consumers.

But there were still a number of factors keeping print media outlets afloat. Online media requires the use of gadgets and Roy said that conventional media such as newspapers or magazines enjoyed the advantage in portability.

"Only when they could be as light as paper would they start to become a threat to conventional media but until then, the new media would have more time to adapt," Roy said.

"However, gadgets keep evolving in terms of their size and companies are constantly developing new technology to make them more comfortable for use."

Djafar Husin Assegaff, an editorial board member of the Media Indonesia newspaper and Metro TV, said traditional media continue to survive based on politicians' reliance on their power to influence the masses.

"But the dying is wrong and painful," said Assegaff, whose company is owned by Surya Paloh, an influential member of the Golkar Party who is seeking its chairmanship.

According to the Internet World Statistics, there are 25 million Internet users in Indonesia, fifth highest among Asian countries. But that only accounts for 10.4 percent of the country's population, a sign that it's still a long way to go before traditional print media completely flatlines.

That doesn't mean, however, that local print media operators can rest easy.

Based on data released by the Association of Newspaper Publishers in 2008, there were 13,151,160 daily, weekly and tabloid newspapers operating throughout Indonesia, of which only 30 percent were surviving, said Leo Batubara, vice chairman of the Press Council. As a fail-safe measure, some media outlets have engaged in mergers.

"In our case, the convergence of Media Indonesia and Metro TV has been successful but it isn't always good news for a newspaper as advertising revenue keeps decreasing," Assegaff said, adding that the government needs to take an active role in sustaining the newspaper industry.

Almost symbolic of the shift from traditional to new media is the youth factor. Roy said it was inevitable for local print media to adjust to the emergence of the Internet as an important source of information because the biggest number of online users – the youth – will make up the next generation of consumers.

"Nowadays media are technology driven and they are shifting from conventional media to new media, which I think complement each other," Roy said.

Karaniya Dharmasaputra, editor in chief of news portal Vivanews.com, said the future points to online media, given the inclination of a younger generation of Indonesians to use the Internet just like the Western youth.

"Media-consuming habits in Indonesia are changing drastically with the rise of the new media," Karaniya said. "Indonesia's mobile Internet penetration ranks in the top five in the world. This holds a strong potential to develop news stories which can be accessible from mobile devices."

While people working in traditional media agree that the Internet provides information faster, Leo believes that newspapers provide more depth in their reports.

Karaniya disagrees, underscoring the common notion that material provided online and information derived from conventional media aren't far off.

"I think journalism is changing. [Online news] is timeless and spaceless as there is no space or column boundaries as in print media," he said.

"It must change as the control of news content has shifted from the hands of editorial board in a conventional media to the hands of the audience as they could immediately submit their comments or critiques to correct the news online."