Results matching “india times of”

Part 1 discussed how the planned changes at The New York Times and International Herald Tribune will help the NYT's continuous news offerings, and how these changes could affect the organization and interaction between both newsrooms.

Part 2 examines how The New York Times intends to:
- Further compete against the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal internationally, and ways in which newspapers can reinforce their international reach.
- Use the strength of its online brand while safeguarding the IHT's popular print brand name.

The Weblog spoke to Jim Roberts, Digital Editor at The New York Times, and Martin Gottlieb, who was appointed to the newly created position of Editor, Global Edition.

How newspapers can become international brands, the NYT joins the race

Until now, the Times hasn't specifically catered to overseas advertisers and readers.

"We need to be agile," said IHT publisher Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, "to compete much more aggressively, nose to nose, with The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and anybody else who is competing for our readers and advertisers."

No doubt that the Times actually borrowed the continuous news outpost idea from the aforementioned competitors, which have been relying on their foreign bureaus to provide round the clock coverage.

The staff memo reaffirmed the NYT's "ambitious plans to expand in the region (Asia), particularly in India." In June, the IHT announced a partnership with the India-based Deccan Chronicle to print the Tribune's world business section in the Financial Chronicle.

With the rise of digital publishing, many news organizations are seeking to grow a previously inaccessible international readership by:

- launching a print edition abroad: several papers have rolled out editions away from home this past year, such as the FT's recently launched Middle East edition in Abu Dhabi, WSJ's partnership with business paper Mint in India, the Daily Mail's partnership with India Today to publish the Mail Today, or The Times of London's Polish edition.

- investing in an online international section: In Germany, referential weekly Der Spiegel launched an English-language International edition on its website in 2004. Five fulltime staffers are dedicated to translating Der Spiegel's content and rewriting it with an international perspective, as well as doing their own international-minded original reporting (the full case study is featured in Trends in Newsrooms 2008). The Guardian adopted a different approach, by launching a separate, foreign-based, US website, Guardian America. The Guardian is reportedly considering similar ventures in other regions.

- simply reinforcing their focus on international news in their regular coverage: the Daily Telegraph's website in the UK, which was neck to neck with the Guardian in terms of traffic in April, claims nearly two thirds of its visitors are from overseas. A well-indexed website helps to brings in a significant number of 'light' international users through search engines.

Merging "co-branded" websites but not print: a branding issue

The NYT's approach is a combination of the first two strategies: the print IHT now serves as The Times' 'global edition' (see picture), while maintaining its trademark brand name. With the proposed online merger, the NYT could also follow the second route, by hosting an international edition online, without having to extensively change its workflows (see Part 1).

The rationale to merge the websites is clearly explained in the memo: according to WebTrends, NYT's website boasts a strong international audience and 58 million global users, compared to iht.com's seven million.

"The global landscape for online news is highly competitive, making scale, speed and resources essential to success. Therefore we have determined that the best future online for the IHT and the NYT globally is through a joint international presence," said the memo.

However, the memo doesn't explicitly say why this won't be the case in print:

"The IHT should become the international print edition of the NYT, whether it is formally branded that way or not."

The main issue at stake is one of branding. "In print, there have been at least a couple of studies that show that among Tribune newspaper readers there is a great identification with the brand, that the brand means something to readers," said Gottlieb.

"More than the name, what accompanies the name, an international perspective, a sense of calling the best stories from The Times and augmenting them with unique reporting," was a combination that many readers liked.

As news organizations seek to grow their international reach, this consideration probably holds true for many that have established a reputable brand name on a local or national scale. However strong the brand name, its association with a particular place or country can potentially play against that news outlet on the international scene.

Source: New York Times - Media Bistro - Jim Roberts, Digital Editor The New York Times - Martin Gottlieb, Editor, Global Edition

The Orange County Register will outsource copy editing and layout duties to Mindworks, an Indian company, for a one-month trial. Editors at Mindworks will work five times a week on selected editing and layout assignments, and will be overseen by the Register's editors.

"This is a small-scale test, which will not touch our local reporting or decision-making," said Register deputy editor John Fabris.

The Register is not the first newspaper company to outsource work to India; the Sacramento Bee and the Miami Herald have both announced plans similar to the Register's. Amid dropping circulation, outsourcing is becoming an increasingly viable option for newspapers looking to reduce costs - but it can also be a risk for editorial quality.

"In a time of rapid change at newspapers, we are exploring many ways to work efficiently while maintaining quality and improving local coverage," Fabris said.

Click here for more on outsourcing.

Source: Yahoo Finance through I Want Media

The International Herald Tribune (IHT) announced today that starting from June 20 it will be printing its 4-page world business section inside India's Financial Chronicle (FC).

In a news release, IHT said that this would provide FC readers with "daily news and analysis on what is happening in companies and deals and in the financial markets around the world, alongside the latest business news in India."

Deccan Chronicle Holdings (DCH) has published FC in Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore since April 16. The IHT release date was chosen to be on the same date as the first FC release from Mumbai.

According to Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, IHT publisher, the development is "exciting" because India 's market has "tremendous potential". By teaming up with DCH, "a dynamic partner with a proven track record", the "appetite for high quality content" will be met.

DCH will be advertising the FC/IHT partnership in Mumbai, Chennai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad through "billboard, television and print" while the IHT will be selling international ads.

Other examples of the West teaming up with the East include the daily paper Mint, a partnership between the Wall Street Journal and Hindustan Times. The Financial Times is also investing in India's business media market by planning for an Indian version of its daily.

Source: iht.com

India's new financial daily, Mint, was launched in February last year and since then has expanded from 80,000 to 122,000 copies (see our previous interview with its editor here). As the Financial Times readies an Indian edition, it is unknown as to how it will be accepted in the market.

In an interview with famed newspaper designer Dr. Mario Garcia, Mint's editor, Raju Narisetti, said he was uncertain whether "there is real room for more than a couple of business dailies" and that there is "a bubble quality" to the "segment" issue.

According to Narisetti, there has been growth in business media such as financial channels and dailies. However, how the FT/TV18 paper will be accepted is not yet evident. There is a question of time and appetite with regard to readers.

Until recently, the FT has been excluded from India "thanks to a brazen misappropriation of its brand." Narisetti said, "If the FT/TV18 paper can raise the bar on Indian business journalism and also bring in strong ethics and journalistic standards, it would be a good addition to Mint."

Narisetti mentioned that non-business newspapers like the Hindustan Times and DNA are investing the most in business coverage. Other local newspapers have not shown the incentive to bring forth a "sizable increase in resources being devoted" for it.

Narisetti is also a World Editors Forum Board member.

Source: www.garciamedia.com through IFRA Executive News Service

Xavier Vidal-Folch, Deputy Director of the Spanish daily El Pais, has been elected President of the World Editors Forum, the global association for senior newsroom executives within the World Association of Newspapers.

Mr Vidal-Folch was elected by the Board of WEF, meeting in Göteborg, Sweden, on the eve of the annual World Editors Forum conference. He succeeds George Brock, Saturday Editor of The Times of London, who served as WEF President for the last four years.

"It is an honour to be the successor of George Brock," said Mr Vidal-Folch. "Under his presidency, WEF became the voice of editors-in-chief through its Editors Weblog, and the attendance to our annual conference more than tripled.

"My task will be to transform the organisation into a truly digital organisation with more products and services available online. WEF wants to welcome more senior news executives through a new professional online network, useful worldwide, which will become a hub for the entire newspaper industry."

Mr Vidal-Folch has been Deputy Director of El Pais since 1989. He has been with the paper since 1982 and has served as Chief Editor and Brussels Bureau Chief.

Harald Stanghelle, the Political Editor of Aftenposten in Norway, was elected Vice President of WEF.

He has been Political Editor of Aftenposten since 2000. He previously served as News Editor of the paper and as Editor-in-Chief of Dagbladet.

Editors from four countries have been nominated to become new members of the WEF Board: Nadia Al-Saqqaf, Editor-in-Chief of the Yemen Times; Raju Narisetti, Editor of Mint, India; Marcelo Rech, Editor-in-Chief of Zero Hora, Brazil; and Gianni Valenti, Deputy Editor of Gazzetta dello Sport, Italy.

The Paris-based World Editors Forum (http://www.worldeditorsforum.org ) is the organisation of the World Association of Newspapers that represents editors-in-chief and other senior news executives. WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, represents 18,000 newspapers; its membership includes 76 national newspaper associations, newspapers and newspaper executives in 102 countries, 12 news agencies and ten regional and world-wide press groups.

Source: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications, WAN, 7 rue Geoffroy St Hilaire, 75005 Paris France. Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00. Fax: +33 1 47 42 49 48. Mobile: +33 6 10 28 97 36. E-mail: lkilman@wan.asso.fr

The Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews about the future of journalism with top editors at leading newspapers around the world. Here is the latest installment with  Emily Bell, Editor-in-Chief of guardian.co.uk in the UK.

View all the interviews in this series here. (including The New York Times, Financial Times, Fairfax Media...)


Questions: "News, journalism, newspapers: same past, different futures?"

- How long do you think you will define your company as a newspaper company or a print company?

We're not doing that already. We changed our names last year from Guardian Newspapers Limited to Guardian News and Media, so we're moving away from defining ourselves as a newspaper company.
But we are still news. We are news-oriented, we are a news media company.

- At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, a panel of futurists claimed that print newspapers wouldn't exist by 2014. To what extent do you agree with this?

I 100% disagree with that statement. 2014 is so close, of course there will still be print newspapers; it is ridiculous to suggest that. Will there be fewer print newspapers in 2014 in certain parts of Western Europe, the US, etc? Yes, most definitely.

But clearly the futurists in Davos haven't looked at newspaper markets in emerging economies like India, etc. where print products are proliferating. They are increasing faster, in basic circulation and number of titles, than they are declining in markets with more mature print readerships. It's a sweeping and very narrow generalization, which is wrong.

We will definitely have a printed product in 2014. If you said 2024 or 2034, who knows, I would say that's far too far away to guess, and it's possible not. Don't forget Arthur Sulzberger said: "I can conceive of a time when we will no longer produce the print paper." Whether he retracted it or not, it's clearly crossed his mind.

Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief here, said he could foresee a time when we will be mainly a digital company and that we don't have a printed product. He actually said that the last printed presses that we bought would be the last ones that would ever be bought.

- In journalism's multi-centennial history, do you view the emergence of digital journalism as part of the continuity, or as a complete breakaway with previous forms of journalism?

It's a complete break. Not so much what happened with the advent of the Internet, but much more what's happened with various programming protocols since, what you would know as Web 2.0, which is the ability to allow the uploading of information by the local generation.

Flickr, blogs, etc. have completely changed the game, because it means all matter of information is exposed and is available to be manipulated, uploaded, reported on, etc. by a whole set of people who are no longer in control of a distribution bottleneck. Actually, what we were doing ten years ago was exploiting a Web publishing bottleneck, which was that we had the money to have the server space, the rack space, the designers - anybody can do that now.

That's completely different, it's not just another slight development of an existing cycle.

- Do you believe in the increasingly active role of the user in the news process, and is it a threat or an opportunity for professional journalists?

Yes, the participation of users in news is inevitable. It is growing and is welcomed. It is a massive opportunity for professional journalists to enhance what they do. The closer you are, the more authentic you are, and the more knowledgeable you can be, then the more purchase you have with the community that will come to you, tell you things and point to your work in certain areas.
I think if you don't have that, in the future as a journalist, you probably don't have much of a future.

'Threat' is a good thing. It's not so much a threat. Now you've got the news event itself, and an immediate set of breaking news competitors like wire services, the BBC, or SkyNews in the UK.
There's another band of capability roundup, people who are actually experts in the kind of events that are happening and who bring knowledge and insight and can communicate near the professionals - the professionals' job is (still) to communicate the stories and make them relevant and understandable. I don't think that's going away.

But what's happening is that there are now other people who can answer who might not be professional journalists - they might be professionals working in the world that you're writing about. It's Dan Gillmor's phrase, "There's always someone better placed in the story than yourself."
If I'm a media journalist writing about what's going on at the BBC... somebody who's inside the BBC, who's not part of their press operations, could be writing with more authenticity, because I can only ever have the view of the outsider.

However, the person who's inside the BBC might not really have the requisites and right perspective to be able to draw the conclusions that perhaps an outsider might have. So I think there's some kind of a blend of insights and knowledge which skillful and professional journalists ought to be able to meld together.

The threat is journalists not being good enough at that. I think it's entirely healthy that there are specialist bloggers who are pushing journalists to be better at what they do.

- Do you consider the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?

I think it's going through a difficult transitory period. The funding now available for people to concentrate for long periods of time on single subject stories, which may or may not come to fruition, has been greatly undermined by the restructuring of professional media.

When I see institutes in the US that are funded specially for investigative journalism, those things are slightly depressing. The idea that news media can't sustain expensive investigative journalism is disappointing.

But it's not all over, there's a vacuum at the moment around serious disclosure. There are not as many (investigative) stories gaining traction, but I think in the future the tools are all there. One of the things that electronic media does is make it harder to hold onto an exclusive, because bits and pieces of the story tend to emerge from all sorts of different sources (ie: the Enron story initially broken by a Time journalist).

Once bits of the story were out there, it gathers momentum much quicker than it used to. So the value of the investigative story, as in keeping it as a brand-defining element, becomes harder and therefore a lot of businesses tend to say, "It's hard for us to keep control of the story, it's even more expensive to dig out, therefore why don't we step down our investment in it."

But there are organizations like ourselves and others such as The New York Times that are absolutely committed to making sure that doesn't happen.

View the other interviews in the Future of Journalism series here.

Source: Emily Bell, editor-in-chief, guardian.co.uk

While print newspapers may be seen to be declining in Europe, the printed word remains an aspiration in some developing markets, such as India, according to an article in The Independent.

"Anyone who can read or write is still looked at with a bit of awe" in many markets in India, says Rajesh Kalra, a veteran journalist who is now chief editor of IndiaTimes, the digital branch of The Times of India.

According to Kalra, many people want to overtly show they are literate and "the first thing you want to do is be seen to be reading a newspaper."

The literacy rate in India is currently at about 61% - but it is 76% for youths. And the print market is booming, so it isn't surprising that many western media are eyeing India for new launches.

"We do see a big potential in emerging markets," says John Ridding, chief executive of the Financial Times. The FT just launched a Middle East edition in Abu Dhabi, and it sees "big opportunities for expansion" in India.

One mustn't confuse expansion with amelioration though.

"In some of these new or fast-growing markets, absolute freedom of the press is untested, and unbiased news coverage is unfamiliar," reported the Independent, echoing a recent Weblog interview with Raju Narisetti, managing editor of Mint.

Source: The Independent (IHT)

Launched in February 2007 as a joint venture between Hindustan Times Media and The Wall Street Journal, Mint, India's English-language business daily, has quickly grown its circulation (from 80,000 at launch to 122,000 copies) and readership, and soon plans to launch new editions in Delhi and Mumbai.

However, according to Managing Editor Raju Narisetti, Mint has had to develop several quality editorial practices in order to distinguish itself from the average newspaper market in India, where some standards of editorial independence and quality reporting lack - and paid editorial content is common practice.

Narisetti will describe Mint's doings at the upcoming World Editors Forum to be held in Gothenburg, Sweden, from June 1 to 4.

To face these ethical dilemmas, Mint implemented several strategies, including publishing a clearly stated corrections policy and code of conduct, easily accessible on the website.

Recently Narisetti wrote an editorial that recapped the number of errors that had been made (mostly factual: gender, titles, dates...). "A lot of papers make errors, we are the only ones who are honest enough to admit it," he said.

"The credibility of media is pretty low in India," said Narisetti. "One of the largest media companies in India actually has a rate card where you can buy coverage."

Some companies, partly held by equity stakes, openly publicize their owners' brands in their publications.

So how can Mint, and the Indian press as a whole, revamp its credibility?

"I'm sorry to say that, but the general consensus in India seems to be that readers don't care, so it doesn't matter."

"Until Mint came along, nobody covered media as an industry, he said."

"There was a gentleman's agreement that you won't write about another newspaper, so that allowed a lot of people to get away doing whatever they want."

Despite his skepticism, Narisetti said: "one of the hopes is that as a lot of western companies form media partnerships in India... that they will also bring in standards and ethics."

No doubt this hope is partly fueled by his own experience. Prior to editing Mint, Narisetti had a 14-year stint at the Wall Street Journal, where he became Editor of Wall Street Journal Europe.

Thanks to this heritage, he remains confident Mint's emphasis on quality will pay. "It's not an easy sell per se, but it's worth doing it because I think long term credibility of the industry is much more important than taking shortcut measures."

Source: Raju Narisetti, Managing Editor, Mint

The Pune-based Sakaal Media Group has launched The Sakaal Times, an English-language 24-page daily with almost 80% outsourced content.  

The Times, which launches in Pune a month after the debut of the morning compact daily The Pune Mirror, replaces the older English-language Sakaal-owned paper The Maharashtra Herald.

Starting with an initial print run of 1,000,000 copies, The Sakaal Times enters a saturated market that includes new entrants Daily News and Analysis and The Mirror as well as established papers such as The Times of India and The Indian Express.

Sakaal Media has made agreements with Dehli-based Asia-Pacific Communication Associates and other news agencies to provide the editorial content.

The Times was designed by newspaper designer Mario Garcia, who recently worked on the design of Thailand's first-ever free sheet.

Sources: Business Standard through IFRA Executive News Service, Exchange4Media.com

The Editors Weblog is running a series of exclusive interviews about the future of journalism with top editors at leading newspapers around the world. Here is the latest installment with Dan Bogler, Managing Editor of the Financial Times in the UK.

Click here to view all interviews in this series. Other titles include The New York Times, the Guardian, Fairfax Media, the Hindustan Times, etc. (full list at the bottom of the interview).


Questions: "News, journalism, newspapers: same past, different futures?"


- How long do you think you will define your company as a newspaper company or a print company?

We see ourselves as a news organization and we're becoming much more agnostic about our distribution channels. We're becoming much more interested in creating relevant information for our readers and much less interested in how it gets to the readers. Pearson, the parent company, clearly is an education company with a print publishing arm and an information division, which includes the FT. At the FT level, we consider ourselves to be a financial news business more than a newspaper. Our mission is to be the gold standard for global business news in print and online - and in any other formats.

- At this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, a panel of futurists claimed that print newspapers wouldn't exist by 2014. To what extent do you agree with this?

Largely but not completely. 10 years from now - 2014 may be slightly too short a time frame - we will still have printed newspapers, because people like reading  things in print. Newspapers, just like the book, are convenient to read in places you can't do with a computer; but my belief is that a lot of what will be printed will be analysis, comment, analysis and opinion. The actual news will be more or less online or in other more timely formats. In a way the FT will split in two, with FT.com for all the news that's breaking and some immediate reactions and  opinion. The more considered analysis will be almost an Economist-type publication. Maybe it wouldn't have to be broadsheet anymore, it could be tabloid or even magazine format. To put it very crudely, you'd have all the news online, and you'd have 12 pages of Martin Wolf the next day in print, and all the editorials, columnists, features and more.

- In journalism's multi-centennial history, do you view the emergence of digital journalism as part of the continuity, or as a complete breakaway with previous forms of journalism?

There's one thing that's old and one thing that's new. What's old and part of the continuum is that traditional companies are going online. Our journalists are now fully integrated and write online and in print. I'm sure that in 2 years time they'll all be carrying video cameras. We've gone from zero videos website to over 100 per month in the last 18 months. That's part of the continuum: it's us doing the same thing in different distribution channels.

What's new is the blogosphere, citizen journalists and the idea that anyone - people who are not qualified journalists, either experts in a narrow field or just interested citizens - can start a blog or website and distribute it. For the FT, you would think it's negative in the sense that there's more news and opinion and more competitors. In fact, that's not really true, it almost enhances the position of leading media brands for several reasons. One is we are trusted, people believe the news they read with us. Secondly, we select and edit, which becomes an increasingly crucial function as there is more information out there. The more 'over-informed' people are, the more likely people who want to know what's actually going on will turn to a few sources that tell them what s actually important. That's what professional newspapers do really well.

- Do you believe in the increasingly active role of the user in the news process, and is it a threat or an opportunity for professional journalists?

I do believe in their increasingly active role of users: very often readers are more informed than us. If you look at an old format like the letters page in the newspaper, the amount of expertise that our readers have, who are often professionals in the City, is just incredible. They know more about it in certain aspects than our journalists. That's why we get CEOs, academics, lawyers, heads of accountancy firms and more writing in to us to say what's actually happening. They can do this online with comments or take part in Q&As, or print their views in the pages of the FT and FT.com. That sort of content is very helpful. We also have a function for any user to comment on the website's stories.

Is it a threat? Sure, to some extent. But as long as it's happening on our site or in the pages of our newspaper, it's been bundled, monitored, checked for quality and therefore is important. We're not going to turn into a place where we just repeat hundreds of readers' letters and have no journalists of our own. It's more of an opportunity for our journalists to become more informed and build contacts among readers. And it's amazing that all these readers are willing to give this information for free.

- Do you consider the Golden Age of investigative journalism is already past, or just beginning?

I don't know. That's a really hard one. I might say it's already past.

There's so much more information out there and it's so much harder for companies to hide information. Take the Northern Rock story, which was broken by BBC journalists, and there was a bank run as a result. It's harder to hide information. The idea that journalists have to do long-term, deep, undercover investigations where they reveal something months later - I don't think it works like that anymore. Journalists still have scoops and still break important stories, but it tends to be in a much shorter time frame. It tends to be a single development that they're breaking rather than a long series of connections.

But frankly, newspapers and media organizations are under pressure. It's hard for us to send a journalist or a group of journalists off three months investigating something - and if nothing works that's a shame but nevermind. We don't have resources to let people go off and do that for such a long time. I think The Golden Age of journalists working undercover, developing sources and breaking big scandals is less likely; but revealing news that people don't want out there, on a short term basis, uncovering a scandal and having it come to light, that's more likely. As soon as a tiny thing breaks now, it gets distributed so quickly that it's hard to see a journalist working undercover for a long time and gradually piecing something together without having it go public much earlier in the process.


Stay tuned for more interviews in our series. Among the other titles that have been asked to participate in these interviews are:

- The New York Times - Jonathan Landman (US)
- Financial Times - Dan Bogler (UK)
- Guardian (UK)
- Washington Post - Jim Brady (US)
- Globe & Mail - Ed Greenspon (Canada)
- The Times (UK)
- The Economist (UK)
- Gazeta Wyborcza - Jaroslaw Kurski (Poland)
- Le Monde (France)
- Die Welt (Germany)
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