Opinion: Do Indian newspapers need to worry about their future?

Posted by Christie Silk on July 6, 2009 at 4:26 PM

With the imminent start of the Indian Newspaper Congress 2009, it is a fitting time to assess the future challenges of the nation's printed press. Pradyuman Maheshwari has discussed the realities of an apparently healthy printed press and warns against complacency with regards to the irresistible rise of online alternatives.

Analysed with the general state of the world's printed media as a benchmark, the Indian press is for all intents and purposes buoyant. Ostensibly, the established papers are coping well with, what is considered to be a temporary, slump in advertising revenue, to the extent that their future existence is not under question. The humbler daily publications are undergoing commercial restructuring to cope with the global slump- many are either awaiting valuation or are being purchased by larger groups. Other publications subsist thanks to their political influence and/or revenue from retail initiatives.

Nontheless, this apparently vigorous fabric of print news publications is beginning to fray as new technologies become commonplace platforms for information distribution and consumption. It is, according to Maheshwari, "the combined onslaught of television and online media that our newspapers need to worry about."

It is imperative that India's news publishers assert themselves on the web, as Internet access becomes more accessible to a widening demographic. Looking back on the earlier online game plans of media organisations, Maheshwari speculates that the newer organs of the media anatomy are simply more suited to internet evolution than those with more established media infrastructures. The Times of India's web ventures Indiatimes and 8888, struggled to compete with online natives Rediff, Yahoo! and Hungama. Conversely, the web has proved a fruitful environment for younger enterprises which started out with an online component-such as ibnlive.com and livemint.com, the online expressions of CNN-IBN and Mint, respectively. India is proving an exciting opportunity for outside news distributors, as Dow Jones & Co. has committed to extending its Indian services.

Maheshwari regrets that most traditional newspaper managements have yet to truly comprehend the "demands of online space" and warns that media-savvy outsiders will realise, with tangible results, the potential for online news services before the former assert their presence. The face of online news is, furthermore, evolving at great speed: Twitter is potentially "a potent form of news delivery" while "blogs have democratised media". Indeed, whereas in print, the name of an entity still holds much sway, online readers are far less concerned by prestige or history as long as they feel they are being informed or entertained by the content.

The vast fabric of the Indian press, reflective of its many linguistically diverse regions, was complicated and fragmented even before the onset of pressure to embrace manifesting new technologies as additional platforms. Local language publications may not have the resources or scope to even attempt these adaptations, yet in reality they present quick development opportunities for foreign investors. The retarded development of online editions of printed papers has largely been down to the reticence of advertisers and editors, unconvinced by the immediate value of web development. Nevertheless, it could also be argued that this is because the Internet is not nearly as ubiquitous, nor developed in the region as it is in places frequently used as comparisons, such as the UK and the US.

The partisans of print certainly have reason to assert the continued predominance of print in India. With the advent of this Congress, however, it may be that now is the perfect time for publishers to get ahead of the online news game, which has had a relatvely "delayed" start in the country.

Source: ExchangeforMedia.com