About Metro Riau

Metro Riau

Metro Riau is an Indonesian-language local daily newspaper published every morning in Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau province, Indonesia. It was first published on 1 April 2005 by PT Metro Riau, having been initiated by Ahmad Rodhi, Heric Rakasiwa and Yudhi DW. From its Metro Graha Pena headquarters on Jalan Soekarno Hatta in Pekanbaru, the paper built a province-wide reporting network covering Riau's regencies and cities, maintained a Mandarin-language rubric for the local Chinese-Indonesian community, and won recognition as Best of Sumatra Newspaper at the Indonesia Print Media Awards in 2013. Its website is metroriau.com.

Founding on 1 April 2005

Metro Riau first appeared on 1 April 2005. Its founders are recorded as Ahmad Rodhi, Heric Rakasiwa and Yudhi DW, and its publisher is PT Metro Riau. The paper was conceived as a local morning daily for Riau — a surat kabar lokal harian that appears every morning — at a time when Pekanbaru was growing rapidly as the administrative and commercial centre of an oil- and plantation-rich province on Sumatra's east coast, facing the Strait of Malacca. Riau already had an established press, led by the long-running Riau Pos and its group titles, and Metro Riau's launch added an independent local competitor organised around the life of the province's cities and regencies.

The date the paper itself celebrates is visible in its own masthead: its electronic paper editions carry the line "Terbit Sejak 1 April 2005" — published since 1 April 2005 — as a standing statement of identity. Few facts about a regional newspaper are as fundamental as that founding date, and Metro Riau has kept it in front of readers on its pages ever since.

Headquarters and company organisation

Metro Riau's editorial and company address is Metro Graha Pena, Jalan Soekarno Hatta numbers 20 to 28, Pekanbaru, Riau. The newspaper's published masthead from its e-paper era gives a detailed picture of the organisation behind the title. Heric Rakasiwa, one of the paper's initiators, appears as president commissioner; HM Maskur as general leader; Adlis Fitrajaya as editor-in-chief and person legally responsible for the publication; and Saparudin Koto as company leader. The editorial board listed Albi Budiman, HM Maskur, Adlis Fitrajaya and Saparudin Koto, with Fajar Widiarto as executive editor and Linda Novia as reporting coordinator.

The same masthead shows the commercial and technical apparatus a provincial daily requires: an advertising manager, a circulation manager, pre-press and design staff, an advertising design unit, an information technology officer, and named printing arrangements through PT Metro Grando at the same Graha Pena address. The paper published its advertising rates openly in the masthead, as Indonesian newspapers traditionally do, with different tariffs for colour and black-and-white advertisements and for front-page positions. An ombudsman function was also listed, held by Wahyu Awaluddin and Sahala TP Hutabarat — a mechanism through which readers could raise complaints about the paper's journalism.

A province-wide network of bureaus

Although published in Pekanbaru, Metro Riau organised itself to report the whole of Riau. Its masthead lists correspondents and bureaus across the province: Bengkalis, Dumai, Indragiri Hulu, Indragiri Hilir, Kampar, Kuantan Singingi, Pelalawan, Rokan Hulu, Rokan Hilir, Siak and the Meranti Islands, together with a representative in Jakarta. That geography is the geography of Riau itself — a province that stretches from the Malacca Strait coast and its port cities, through the peatland and plantation regencies of the interior, to the river towns of the south. A daily that maintained named reporters in each regency could cover local government, courts, plantations, ports and community affairs at the level where they happened, rather than relying solely on the provincial capital's news.

The structure reflects the classic model of the Indonesian provincial daily: a central newsroom in the capital that sets the edition, fed by a network of regional correspondents whose reports give the paper its claim to represent the province as a whole. For readers outside Pekanbaru, the presence of their own regency's name in the masthead was a signal that their district's affairs belonged in the paper.

Editors-in-chief through the years

Metro Riau's editorial leadership has changed several times across its history, and the succession is part of its public record. Its editors-in-chief are listed in sequence as Dahrul; Satria B.; Ahmad Rodhi, one of the paper's founders, who is marked as deceased; Asril Darma; Adlis Pitrajaya, who held the post from 2017 to 2023; and Fajar W, who succeeded him. The masthead of the paper's e-paper editions in 2021 fits within that sequence, naming Adlis Fitrajaya as editor-in-chief and person in charge, with Heric Rakasiwa as president commissioner. The progression from founder-editors to a later professional generation mirrors the maturation of many Indonesian regional dailies founded in the 2000s.

The Mandarin rubric and Riau's Chinese-Indonesian readers

One feature sets Metro Riau apart in descriptions of the paper: it maintains a Mandarin-language rubric to accommodate the ethnic Chinese community. Riau, and especially its coastal cities such as Dumai, Bengkalis and Bagansiapiapi, has long-established Chinese-Indonesian communities whose presence in the province's trade and civic life dates back generations, and Pekanbaru itself has a substantial Chinese-Indonesian population. A rubric in Mandarin within an Indonesian-language daily was a deliberate act of inclusion — an acknowledgement that the province's readership was multilingual, and that a local newspaper could serve a minority community in its own written language while reporting the shared affairs of the province to everyone. Reference works on the paper single out this rubric as one of its defining characteristics.

Awards and recognition

Metro Riau's journalism has been recognised beyond its home province. In 2013 the newspaper won the title Best of Sumatra Newspaper at the IPMA — the Indonesia Print Media Awards — an achievement reported at the time under the headline that Harian Metro Riau had taken the Best of Sumatra Newspaper honour at IPMA 2013. For a paper then only eight years old, competing against the established dailies of the whole island of Sumatra, the award marked its arrival as a serious provincial title.

Recognition continued at the level of individual journalism. In 2019 a Metro Riau journalist won an award at the Pertamina RU II Journalism Award — the Anugerah Jurnalistik Pertamina RU II 2019. Pertamina's RU II refinery unit is based in Dumai, one of the bureau cities in Metro Riau's network, and energy reporting is a core subject for any Riau newspaper. The award connected the paper's province-wide reporting structure to honours for its coverage of the industry that shapes so much of Riau's economy.

Print circulation in the digital era

Like every Indonesian newspaper, Metro Riau has had to adapt its business to digital competition. Academic attention to the paper in recent years has focused on exactly that machinery: a study published in the Jurnal Fasilkom examined the development of a web-based newspaper circulation administration information system at PT Metro Riau Pekanbaru. The study describes an era in which competition in print media, especially daily newspapers, had become increasingly intense, and in which the company needed better systems to record, distribute and manage the circulation of the daily paper accurately and quickly. Its account of Metro Riau's circulation administration — the unglamorous work of getting printed copies to agents and readers across a large province, and accounting for them — documents the operational side of keeping a provincial daily alive.

The paper's own presence has extended online through metroriau.com, the website listed in its masthead and in reference works, and through electronic paper editions that reproduce the printed pages, complete with the full masthead, for digital readers. The e-paper format preserved the structure of the print product — including its statement of having published since 1 April 2005 — while freeing distribution from the physical limits of print runs.

Riau and Pekanbaru as its reporting ground

Metro Riau's home city has been Riau's capital since 20 January 1959, when Pekanbaru replaced Tanjung Pinang as the provincial capital. The city began as a trading post under the Siak Sri Indrapura sultanate — its founding is dated to 23 June 1784 — and grew into the service centre for an oil-producing and plantation province. The subjects that dominate Riau's public life flow from that economy and geography: petroleum and the energy industry around Dumai and the interior fields, oil palm and pulpwood plantations and the land and environmental questions they raise, the ports and trade of the Malacca Strait coast, and the governance of a dozen regencies and cities spread across a large and varied province. A morning daily with reporters stationed from Meranti to Rokan Hulu was built to follow those subjects where they occurred.

Legacy and standing

Metro Riau occupies a clear place in the press of Riau: an independently initiated local daily, founded in Pekanbaru on 1 April 2005 by Ahmad Rodhi, Heric Rakasiwa and Yudhi DW, published by PT Metro Riau, and developed into a province-wide newspaper with bureaus in every part of Riau and a representative in Jakarta. Its Mandarin rubric marks an unusual commitment to the province's Chinese-Indonesian readers; its 2013 IPMA Best of Sumatra Newspaper award marks the esteem its print journalism achieved within a decade of founding; and its succession of editors-in-chief, from its founders to Adlis Pitrajaya and Fajar W, traces its passage from start-up to institution. In a province whose news was long dominated by older group-owned titles, Metro Riau demonstrated that a locally founded morning paper could build a durable readership across Riau.