Submitting Letters and Opinions to The Jakarta Post
The Jakarta Post accepts letters to the editor and opinion pieces through their official website. You can find the submission portal under their "Opinion" or "Write For Us" section. The process is straightforward but has some specific requirements you need to meet for your piece to actually get published. I started submitting letters around 2018 when a local policy change affected my neighborhood and I wanted to push back. That first attempt got auto-rejected because I didn't include my full legal name, phone number, and home address. They require all three, not just an email and a name. I thought it was excessive until I learned they verify submissions before publishing. Their editorial team cross-checks addresses against public records to filter out spam and fake accounts. Without that verification step, theLetters section would be overrun with bots. Here's how the actual submission process works. You go to the Jakarta Post website, navigate to the Opinion section, and fill out their contact form or submit directly through their editorial email. They prefer written submissions via email at letters@thejakartapost.com for letters to the editor, while opinion columns and guest editorials go through a different pathway on their contributor portal. The key difference matters because each route has different editorial standards.
Letters to the editor have a strict word limit of around 250 words. Opinion pieces can run much longer, typically 600 to 800 words. I've seen longer pieces accepted up to 1,200 words but those usually come from established columnists or subject matter experts with prior publication history. If you're unknown, keep it tight. Their editors skim submissions quickly and lengthy pieces from unverified writers tend to get bounced without a response. One thing that trips people up is the tone requirement. The Jakarta Post wants substantive, well-reasoned arguments, not rants. I once submitted a letter criticizing a new toll road policy that was thorough but emotionally charged. It came back with a note saying the argument was solid but the delivery undermined the credibility. They rewrote the subject line and softener the language before publishing it under my name. That happens occasionally. It's not a rejection, it's an edit. But if you're attached to your exact phrasing, tell them upfront that you prefer to publish as submitted. Another counter-intuitive detail: being Indonesian or based in Indonesia is not a requirement. They publish international perspectives regularly, especially on Southeast Asian politics and economics. I've seen op-eds from expats living in Jakarta, regional analysts based in Singapore, and even academics in Europe writing about Indonesian policy. The bar is the same regardless of location. Your argument needs to be informed and cite credible sources. Vague claims about "corruption" or "poor governance" without data or specific examples rarely make it past the initial review.
The turnaround time varies significantly. Letters to the editor typically get a response within two weeks, sometimes sooner if the topic is time-sensitive. Opinion pieces go through a longer editorial pipeline because they require fact-checking and layout coordination. I've waited six weeks for an acknowledgment on a policy analysis piece. Six weeks. Not a rejection, just silence. It eventually got published four months later when the government announced a related budget change. Timing matters more than quality sometimes. If your submission gets rejected, you'll usually get a brief automated or semi-personalized email. Don't resubmit the same piece immediately. Fix the issue they flagged and try again in a few weeks. I resubmitted a piece on education policy after revising it based on editor feedback and it ran three months later. The editorial staff remembers previous submissions. Repeated rejected pieces from the same author without revisions get flagged and auto-filtered. A practical workaround for people who struggle with the formal tone requirement: write your draft naturally first, then go through it twice. The first pass removes emotional language and speculative statements. The second pass adds specific data points and sources. This takes about 20 minutes for a 600-word piece and dramatically increases your chances of acceptance. I measure this because I track my submission outcomes across dozens of attempts over several years.
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One limitation worth noting: The Jakarta Post has a clear editorial lean toward centrist, pro-business, reform-minded perspectives. Pieces that are overtly partisan, advocate radical policy shifts without practical implementation details, or attack specific political figures without substantial evidence tend to get filtered out early. This isn't necessarily a flaw, it's a positioning choice by the publication. If your opinion falls outside that general orientation, consider alternative outlets like Tempo, Detik, or international platforms like The Diplomat or Nikkei Asia which cover Indonesian topics from different angles. For the most current submission guidelines, visit thejakartapost.com and navigate to their Opinion or Contact section. The exact email address and form links may shift as they update their digital infrastructure, so check the site directly rather than relying on old forum posts or cached pages that point to deprecated URLs.
