Tribun Network is a newspaper chain and online news outlet in Indonesia owned by Kompas Gramedia. Currently, the group owns 22 local newspapers and a national newspaper spread across 24 cities and regencies in Indonesia.
History
The headquarters of Banjarmasin Post in Banjarmasin, a part of Tribun Network
In the late 1980s, the Department of Information asked major newspapers to assist minor local newspapers which were hampered by the press permit (SIUPP) problem. The government restricted advertisement space to 30% of all content for newspapers not aiding minor papers.[1]
In 1987, Kompas Gramedia took over the ownership of the Sriwijaya Post in Palembang, and established the subsidiary PT Indopersda Primamedia (Persda) to assist regional newspapers in need. In 1988, Kompas Gramedia took over Mimbar Swadaya a weekly newspaper in Banda Aceh, to rebranding to Serambi Indonesia, and the weekly newspaper Surya in Surabaya, which began publishing daily. Kompas Gramedia took over the Pos Kupang daily in 1992, and in 1994, the Banjarmasin Post.[2][user-generated source]
Persda later strengthened its business by publishing its own regional newspapers in other cities under the Tribun brand. The first newspaper to hold the brand Tribun Kaltim was first published in 2003 in Balikpapan; followed by Tribun Timur (Makassar), Tribun Jabar (Bandung), among others.
In 2010, Persda rebranded to Tribun Network, and launched the unified tribunnews.com online portal.[3]
In 2014, Tribun Network published a national-oriented sports newspaper Super Ball[4] as a spin-off for the football section of its newspaper members. Its online portal, which was originally a subdomain of Tribunnews.com, is currently a subdomain of Bolasport.com.[5]
Tribunnews.com is Tribun Network's online news portal, with the chain's newspapers publishing in via subdomains.
Tribunnews.com was the most popular nationally-hosted website in Indonesia in 2018, with 183.2 million visits per month.[6] It was 38th in the world's most popular websites by traffic as of April 16, 2020[update].[7]
In January 2019, Tribunnews.com was among the seven Indonesian online media with the highest viewership, reaching 150 million Indonesians, or 56% of the population.[8]
Criticism
In 2023, the Makassar branch of the website, Tribun Timur, as well as its associated YouTube channel have been criticized by BBC Monitoring as well as the Indonesian watchdog Remotivi for its pro-Russian coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[9][10]
^"Explainer: Russian influence in Indonesia's media environment". BBC Monitoring. 13 May 2024. Retrieved 2 August 2025. Other Indonesian news outlets such as Tribun Timur have featured pro-Russian messaging in their reporting. This has been evident in their reporting of the war in Ukraine, as soon on Tribune Timur's YouTube account.
