The bond with readers is the key to The Post's successes.
More than ever, people are hungry for information. Amid the many competing voices that crowd Cambodia's Khmer-language newspaper market, readers want a news source they can trust.
Enter The Phnom Penh Post's Khmer-language edition, which hits the streets today after months of planning as a 24-page tabloid-format paper - independent of its English-language sister paper, The Phnom Penh Post.
The characteristic of a great newspaper is reliability.
With The Post Khmer, we intend to now extend the sense of trust cultivated over nearly two decades of publishing in Cambodia to our readers and advertisers in both languages.
No Khmer-language newspaper in modern Cambodia has proved itself to be a great one. If any can, it will be The Post.
Today's launch of Cambodia's only truly independent Khmer-language newspaper is, in itself, a momentous occasion.
The Post Khmer does not intend to stop there. It will evolve, reaching a wider audience - in the Kingdom and abroad - through both its print edition and one of the region's most comprehensive newspaper Web sites, www.phnompenhpost.com, which offers not only the most up-to-date news, but a vast archive of stories, classified ads, a weekend lifestyle section and special supplements.
Back at home, The Post Khmer hopes to soon embrace technology that is commonplace in more developed markets, delivering news and advertising by SMS, Twitter and RSS feeds that will keep our readers as informed as any in Cambodia.
But behind these innovations is the fundamental, shoe-leather journalism that is at the heart of any great newspaper.
The Post Khmer's Cambodian staff of reporters and editors - some of the Kingdom's most experienced - will raise the bar for what is acceptable journalism for today's Khmer readers.
They will open the door for a younger generation of reporters to learn from the best and continue the tradition of journalistic excellence that is begun today.
They will be caretakers of a newspaper's most precious asset: its bond with it readers.
Cambodia is a small country with a still-smaller newspaper market, and it is crucial that The Post Khmer keep its audience in mind as it reports on what is important to readers across the Kingdom.
Political influence and commercial bias have no part in fair and objective reporting - not for the readers and certainly not for The Post Khmer's journalists.
Today is a celebration of the future of the Khmer-language press in Cambodia.
In these uncertain times for the newspaper industry, The Post Khmer will not only survive, but flourish as it straddles the worlds of traditional and digital media, and redefines how news is delivered to the Kingdom's Khmer readers.
Ross Dunkley is the publisher of the English- and Khmer-language editions of The Phnom Penh Post.
