Abstract The fall of the New Order in 1998, which was soon followed by regional autonomy and decentralization policies, changed Indonesia’s political landscape. Local political actors emerged by utilizing and controling all local resources, including the media and press access. At the same time, the post-New Order era witnessed the unprecedented growth of local media in provincial Indonesia. In addition to local media businesses, various companies in Jakarta and Surabaya also established local media industries as their subsidiaries. In the New Order era, there was only one local newspaper in Jambi and now there are at least 20 local newspapers. Circulation of the newspapers are very small. Currently the three largest of printing, respectively, are Tribun Jambi (17,000 copies), Jambi Independent (6,000) and Jambi Ekspres (4,000). The others is only 200-500 copies. With a small printing and sales, how can the local newspapers in Jambi survive? No doubt the durability is caused by donations from the local (district and provincial) governments to the local newspapers. Donations primarily in two forms: subscriptions and advertising. Local governments subscribe to almost all newspapers published in Jambi: 25-100 newspapers per district; a total of about 300 to 1,200 copies purchased by local governments in Jambi. Meanwhile, the ads appear each day filing the pages of the newspapers. For the purposes of subscriptions and ads, district and provincial governments allocate a budget of IDR 4-15 billion a year. Donations from the local governments can contribute 40- 80 percent of total newspaper revenues. Because the close relationship between local newspapers and government, newspapers cannot criticize the governments. They are always overshadowed by the threat of termination of donations. The public does not get honest information about their government. Many researchers see the rapid growth of newspaper industry in post-New Order Indonesia because of the ratification of the press bill, importantly the Publishing and Printing Licensing (SIUPP) has been concluded. It is true for national newspapers, but there are other factors for local newspaper. Although the number of newspapers has risen significantly, in fact the number of national newspapers has continued to fall since 2006, while local newspapers have grown. Jambi case shows that the factor of regional autonomy and the political dynamics at the local level clearly contribute to this growth. Keywords: Local newspaper, post-New Order Indonesia, decentralization, regional autonomy, Jambi.

Kata Kunci : Surat Kabar