About Duta Masyarakat

Duta Masyarakat

Duta Masyarakat is a general daily newspaper based in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia, and published at www.duta.co. It is managed under the auspices of Pengurus Besar Nahdlatul Ulama, the central board of Nahdlatul Ulama, and it has long been recognised as the best-known surviving newspaper title associated with the NU movement. Its reporting gives priority to the values of the community, and its core readership has historically been the members of Nahdlatul Ulama together with the wider public in East Java and in Jakarta. Few Indonesian newspapers can match its unusual life story: founded in the early years of independence, silenced during the New Order, and revived after Reformasi began in 1998.

Origins in the Nahdlatul Ulama movement

The idea for the newspaper came from within Nahdlatul Ulama after NU left the Masyumi coalition and stood as a political party in its own right. According to historical studies of the paper, the initiative is traced to KH A. Wahid Hasyim, and the name Duta Masyarakat was the single name chosen at a meeting of Pengurus Besar Nahdlatul Ulama. The purpose was practical as well as political. NU needed a trumpet and a connecting channel between its leadership and its branches, so that its people across Indonesia could gain a clear picture of the problems arising in many fields and could use that picture as material for consideration in facing the issues of the day. That founding purpose was set out in a circular addressed to NU branch boards throughout Indonesia.

The resources behind the venture were modest and deeply rooted in the movement. Wahid Hasyim left behind a printing works and its building, an old NU press that had previously operated at Jalan Sasak 23 in Surabaya, with premises in Senayan, Jakarta. The Senayan printing operation stood under Yayasan Muawanah, a name Wahid Hasyim used to honour the services of KH Mahfudz Siddiq, a chairman of PBNU remembered as a pioneer of the Muawanah, or mutual-help, movement. Because the old press was not adequate, the managers bought a newer press on credit. With the capital of Yayasan Muawanah, A. A. Achsien, Zainul Arifin and Jamaluddin Malik founded PT Timbul, which published the daily Duta Masyarakat in cooperation with N. V. Pertjetakan. The paper was placed in the former PBNU office at Menteng Raya number 24 in Jakarta, which also served as an office of PP Muslimat NU.

First publication and the 1955 election

Duta Masyarakat was first published on 2 January 1954. Its establishment was deliberately timed ahead of the Indonesian legislative election of 1955, the first national election of the independence era, when NU was competing as a party and needed a daily voice to spread its ideas and aspirations. Its early slogan spoke of fostering Islamic and national cooperation, rendered in its motto about building Islamic-national cooperation, and the slogan later changed to a phrase meaning bearer of the mandate of the suffering of the ummah. In that period the newspaper presented itself as the trumpet of NU, working to portray a calm climate for the honest and clean implementation of Pancasila at a time when political intrigue from extreme currents, left and right, civilian and military, was seen as a danger to be prevented.

During the Old Order period the paper was managed by journalists whose names remain prominent in Indonesian press history. Historical accounts list Mahbub Djunaidi, M. Said Budairy and Zain Badjeber among those who ran Duta Masyarakat in that era, and other accounts add Asa Bafaqih, Chalid Mawardi and Darto Wahab to the roll of capable journalists formed at the paper. For a time Duta Masyarakat was counted among the print media that mattered in the country, a daily whose reporting carried weight well beyond the internal affairs of one organisation.

Closure under the New Order

The change of regime ended that first life. With the coming of the New Order, publication of Duta Masyarakat was stopped, and accounts of its history record that it ceased publishing in 1971. The silence lasted for decades. One historical study calculates a vacuum of twenty-seven years, during which the title survived as memory while other NU media appeared in the intervening years, among them the magazine Aula in 1978. Of the NU press ventures of those years, the titles that endured were the daily Duta Masyarakat, once it returned, and Majalah Aula. The long closure is central to understanding the paper: it is not a title that published continuously, but one that was created, suppressed by the conditions of an authoritarian period, and then deliberately brought back when Indonesian politics opened again.

Revival after Reformasi in 1998

Indonesia entered the Reformasi era in 1998, and Duta Masyarakat could be published again. The revived paper first appeared under the name Duta Masyarakat Baru. Accounts of the revival credit the Jawa Pos Group, led by Dahlan Iskan, with pioneering the return, and describe the revived title as a medium associated with Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa, the party founded by NU figures in the Reformasi moment. Abdurrahman Wahid, widely known as Gus Dur, held the senior commissioner role, Syaifullah Yusuf, known as Gus Ipul, served as general manager, and Gus Mus served as editor-in-chief with Arif Afandi as deputy, while M. Masud Adnan was executive editor. The paper first circulated from Jakarta, based on Jalan Kebayoran Lama in South Jakarta in the same building as the Jawa Pos office there.

The revival was not smooth. Within about three months production difficulties appeared, because production was carried out in Surabaya while the office was in Jakarta. The office was therefore moved to Surabaya, to the Jawa Pos premises and to activity centred at the PWNU office on Jalan Darmo. After some months of smoother production, difficulties returned, leadership of the company passed briefly to Hasyim Muzadi, and high printing costs again forced a change. In 2001 leadership passed to Choirul Anam, known as Cak Anam. Under Cak Anam the name Duta Masyarakat Baru was changed back to Harian Umum Duta Masyarakat, and the paper was based at Gedung Bisma on Jalan Kutisari Indah Barat in Surabaya. Printing, which had at first been done at the Surya newspaper, was later handled by the paper's own printing company, PT Duta Aksara Mulia, after the cost of outside printing proved too large.

Surabaya base and later development

After several years at Kutisari Indah, the office moved to Graha Astra Nawa at Jalan Gayungsari Timur number 35 in Surabaya, the address associated with the paper in later studies. In 2009 the paper also opened a branch in Jakarta, on Jalan Kramat in Central Jakarta, restoring a physical presence in the capital where it had first been published more than half a century earlier. As a legal post-Reformasi publication it held a press publishing business permit, SIUPP number 705/SK/Menpen/SIUPP/1998. In the Cak Anam period the paper carried the slogan Suara Hati Nurani Rakyat, the voice of the conscience of the people, and appeared in an eight-page portion. Its finances, after an early struggle to meet costs, were described in historical research as stabilised as advertising grew and support came from its general manager.

The editorial leadership recorded in studies of the paper changed over time while its NU character remained constant. A 2004 masthead listed advisers including Gus Dur, Gus Mus, KH Sahal Mahfudz and Gus Ipul. A later structure recorded to 2016 listed expert adviser KH A. Mustofa Bisri, known as Gus Mus, together with Asad Said Ali and Alwi Shihab, general manager Drs. H. Choirul Anam, director Mokhammad Kaiyis, and editor-in-chief Mokhammad Kaiyis with executive editor Mohammad Hakim, while an earlier arrangement in the same study named Abdullah Zaim as editor-in-chief and Muhammad Kaiyis as executive editor. These changing mastheads are recorded here as they appear in academic studies of the paper, and they illustrate a newsroom led by figures from within the NU community the paper serves.

Editorial identity and readership

Throughout its two lives, Duta Masyarakat has defined itself by service to a community rather than by neutrality at a distance. Its stated priority in reporting is the values of society, and its founding documents cast it as a link between a movement's leadership and its grassroots. Its target readers at the revival were set first as the members of Nahdlatul Ulama in East Java, the province where NU has its deepest roots and where Surabaya serves as its publishing home, and the readership was later widened to the general public, with Jakarta as the other principal audience named in descriptions of the paper. That combination, a movement newspaper that also addresses the general reader in East Java and the capital, explains both its resilience and its limits: when its movement and its country were denied a free press, it disappeared, and when both revived, it returned.

Names and slogans across its history

The paper's changing names and slogans summarise its history. It began as Duta Masyarakat, in the old spelling Duta Masjarakat, with a motto of Islamic and national cooperation, later changed to bearer of the mandate of the suffering of the ummah. It returned in 1998 as Duta Masyarakat Baru, the New Duta Masyarakat, and under Choirul Anam from 2001 it resumed the name Harian Umum Duta Masyarakat, carrying the slogan Suara Hati Nurani Rakyat, the voice of the conscience of the people. Each change marks a documented phase, party daily of the 1950s, Reformasi revival title, and settled Surabaya general daily, rather than a break in identity, and the continuity of the Duta Masyarakat name across all three phases is the thread on which its claim to a 1954 founding rests.

Place in the history of the Indonesian press

Historians of Nahdlatul Ulama's press place Duta Masyarakat at the end of a longer line of NU publishing that began with internal magazines such as Swara Nahdlatul Oelama and continued with Berita Nahdlatul Oelama and Oetoesan Nahdlatul Oelama, publications that attracted readers beyond NU itself. Founded in 1954, Duta Masyarakat is described in that scholarship as the NU daily that still survives today, despite its long interruption. Its survival is therefore routinely presented as remarkable: a party and movement daily of the 1950s, an era when many Indonesian newspapers were short-lived, that was closed under the New Order, lay dormant for more than a quarter of a century, and yet returned under its own name in Surabaya, where it continues as a general daily for NU members and the wider East Java and Jakarta public, with its online home at duta.co.