RAMU's NEWS SQR

New HINDUSTAN : We are befooling our readers, befooling ourselves and befooling management!!!

2011-04-12T07:57:00.001+05:30

Only declaring new content will not do, we need to bring new content too!!!

This is new Hindustan!! editor is boasting big things about content and design!! Sorry Mr Garcia, you failed here!!!

Where is TARAKKI oriented new content?

Your business and yuva pages are very shallow?

Where is reader friendly-navigation friendly design?

Design carries too many such elements which has nothing to do either with communicability or with navigation!!!

Space consumed for dumb design and content got squeezed!!!!

WSJ weekend edition : following NYT

2010-09-27T14:18:00.002+05:30

Last week WSJ launched its weekend edition.

WSJ and just above it WALL STREET JOURNAL. Why? there must be conflicting opinions and designer team just accomodated both!!!!

They changed just not to change anything!!! What an idea SIRJI!!!

Don't they want to be just NYT?

News is no longer broken down into print or television or radio

2010-09-22T13:17:00.000+05:30

News is no longer broken down into print or television or radio. The device will determine what you're getting. There's no reason you shouldn't be getting video with your news if you're getting it on an iPad. So newspapers have to move gradually into producing more video. Content is becoming more important in this world, because distribution systems are falling away and digital platforms are merging together.

The Journalists Formerly Known as the Media: Jay Rosen's Advice to the Next Generation

2010-09-22T12:26:00.000+05:30

The struggle to make the fiction of an informed and engaged public more factual—that is, realer—continues on. When technology and markets change, new things become thinkable within that struggle. And so journalism itself has graduated to the next stage of its development.

This is adapted and expanded from the Inaugural Lecture Rosen gave to the incoming class at Sciences Po école du journalisme in Paris, September 2, 2010: their first day. Presented to French students, it is intended for anyone studying journalism today, or attempting to re-learn it.

Typically when people like me—a professor of journalism who is deeply involved in the digital world—advise people like you—students just starting their careers in journalism—we say to you things like:

You need to be blogging.

You need to understand search engines.

You need to know Flash and perhaps HTML5.

You need to grasp web metrics like Google analytics.

You need to know how to record audio or edit video

You need to “get” mobile. (“Mobile is going to be big!”)

And all of those things are true. They are all important. But I want to go in a completely different direction today. Ready? You need to understand that the way you imagine the users will determine how useful a journalist you will be.

A shift in power

It turns out that the original title I gave myself, The People Formerly Known as the Audience and the Audience Properly Known as the Public, is a problem, because the word for “public” in French is the same as the word for “audience.” We have to work around that. And to help I have a clip from a movie I want to show you. It’s from the 1976 film Network, which is about a crazed television newsman named Howard Beale who begins to act out his craziness on the air. This is probably the most famous scene in the film. (It takes five minutes to watch.)

What is this scene “about?” In my reading of it, the filmmakers are showing us what the mass audience was: a particular way of arranging and connecting people in space. Viewers are connected “up” to the big spectacle, but they are disconnected from one another. Or to use the term I have favored, they are “atomized.” (See Audience Atomization Overcome.) But Howard Beale does what no television person ever does: he uses television to tell its viewers to stop watching television.

When they disconnect from TV and go to their windows, they are turning away from Big Media and turning toward one another. And as their shouts echo across an empty public square they discover just how many other people had been “out there,” watching television in atomized simultaneity, instead of doing something about the inarticulate rage that Beale put into words. (“I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the streets. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad!”)

The reason I showed you this clip is that it makes vivid for us a great event we are living through today: the breakup of the atomized “mass” audience and a shift in power that goes with it. What would happen today if someone on television did what Howard Beale did? Immediately people who happened to be watching would alert their followers on Twitter. Someone would post a clip the same day on YouTube. The social networks would light up before the incident was over. Bloggers would be commenting on it well before professional critics had their chance. The media world today is a shifted space. People are connected horizontally to one another as effectively as they are connected up to Big Media; and they have the powers of production in their hands.

The public becomes thinkable

This kind of shift has happened before. And now I want to take you back 250 years, to events in France and England that gave birth to the modern public.

Before there was a public that could be informed by the press, before there was anything like “public opinion,” before there was any political journalism at all, politics was considered the king’s business,le secret du roi. It was owned and operated by the king, and secrecy about everything that happened in government was the normal state of things. There was publicity too, but not about what was actually happening in the halls of power. In the words of Jürgen Habermas, it was “publicity that is staged for show or manipulation,” rituals in which the majesty of the crown and the glory of the nation could be vivified or put on display. Absolutism gave ownership of politics to the crown; and that included virtually all information about affairs of state.

In 1764, for example, the King of France ruled it illegal to print or sell or peddle on the street anything about the reform of state finances—past, present or future. It’s not only that there was no freedom of the press. That was true, but more than that: The king’s mystery was not considered the people’s business. The whole idea that the affairs of the nation belonged to the people of that nation had yet to be accepted. Without an idea like that (today we would call it “the public’s right to know…”) the very practice of journalism is impossible—in fact, unthinkable.

But by 1781 Jacques Necker, finance minister to the King of France, had published the first ever public record of the state’s finances, the Compte rendu. Three thousand copies were sold on the first day. Most historians say he failed to give a true picture of how deeply the crown was in debt, and that he hid the cost of borrowing. But simply by publishing the Compte rendu Necker helped to raise the curtain on a new idea: public confidence required transparency. Public opinion could not be ignored. There was a public “out there,” and even princes had to appeal to it.

So what happened between 1764 and 1781? The answer to that is complex and worth a book in itself. Fortunately we have one: Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Here I will simply list some of the factors responsible for the shift:

* The growth and spread of printing, which was bound up with the market for printed books. This meant, for example, that what was illegal to print or sell in France could be published in Holland and smuggled in.

* The rise of the periodical press. Newspapers and pamphlets—some legal and restrained, some clandestine and unrestrained in their rhetoric—spread the concept of public discussion of public affairs. This was difficult to contain.

* Closely related to that were the literary salons in which discussion of what was read became normal, providing a template for public opinion as commentary on what is in the press. (In England this role was played by taverns and coffee houses.)

* The emergence of international capitalism, which created what Habermas called the “carrier class” for the public sphere, the literate bourgeoise: merchants, traders and businessman who were not impressed by “publicity staged for show or manipulation,” but who might buy French debt if they were persuaded that the government could repay it on time. Necker no doubt had these people in mind when he published his record of state finances, and when he called public opinion “an invisible power that, without treasury, guard, or army, gives its laws to the city, the court, and even the palace of kings.”

* The spread of enlightenment ideas, in which reason was supposed to be sovereign, not the king and his court. Public opinion, when it was praised by people like Necker, meant reasoned, settled opinion, not the violent swings in mood that frightened so many aristocrats.

* The search for other sources of authority beyond divine right and despotism. Necker worked for the King of France. He was trying to find a way to reform and legitimate the continued authority of the crown as it came under increasing attack in the last decades of the ancien régime. That is why he called public opinion a “tribunal,” and said “princes themselves [must] respect it.”

This complex shift from one constellation of ideas to another was put into words by the historian Keith Michael Baker: “From the public person of the sovereign to the sovereign person of the public.” Something like that has to happen before journalism can even be conceived. In fact the rise of the periodical press, the emergence of the public as an actor in politics, and the power of public opinion such that even princes have to respect it, are not so much parallel developments as three aspects of the same event. Together, they made modern journalism thinkable.

The people out of doors

In England during the same period, a similar event occurs. If we could listen in on Parliament in 1750 we might hear a phrase in common use then, “the people indoors.” It referred to the members of Parliament themselves when they were gathered in session. In what way did this small and elite group represent “the” people of England? Not through popular election; that didn’t really happen until the next century. Parliament thought of itself as the people because the King had to consult with Parliament and when he did he was consulting with the whole nation.

This was a fiction, of course, but it was the ruling fiction at the time. “The people indoors” were quite aware that they were not representative of the whole population. That is why they also referred to the people “out of doors,” another phrase in use at the time. This meant everybody else. The king didn’t have to consult with them. Nor did the people out of doors enjoy freedom of speech or freedom of the press. In fact, it was illegal to publish what was said in Parliament or to attack the King in print.

For the “people indoors,” freedom of speech was protected within the halls of Parliament itself. A member could call the king’s policies foolish and not be held to account, whereas a printer who put that sentiment in a pamphlet could be arrested the next day. I am not going to go into the whole story, which involves the printer and politician John Wilkes and the right to report on debates in Parliament (established in 1771.) Suffice it to say that in England, too, politics as the exclusive possession of the king, his ministers and Parliament gave way to a much more open system, in which the newspapers could report on what was happening, a literate public could discuss it and public opinion could form.

Ignoring the public became harder, gestures toward transparency more common. Rights fundamental to the practice of journalism—politics as the people’s business, freedom of speech and of the press, the right to record what was said in Parliament and publish it in the newspapers—began to be established, though it took a long time for them to be secured. The people out of doors grew up and became the public, the one that has a right to know. These things have to happen before there can be a profession of journalism worth joining. That is why I am telling you about them.

The engineering of opinion

I am conducting this tour at the level of ideas. But one could also say ideals. The all-inclusive public that is fully informed about what is happening… and argues about it in public settings…. so as to form an independent and reasoned opinion… which is then listened to by the people in power… this has never been a description of how public life in a competitive democracy actually works. The fight has been to make it truer and truer for more and more people. That fight goes on. When we compare the reality to the picture, we can tell where we are, and perhaps where we need to go.

Meanwhile, there are endless complications to weigh. For example, the same tools that make an informed public possible allow for manipulation and propaganda on a national scale. As we enter the modern age this becomes very obvious. Let’s jump ahead to Paris in 1919 and the Peace Conference that ended World War I. Something new was seen at Paris. At previous international conferences intended to conclude wars and settle borders, the diplomats would negotiate in secret and emerge weeks later with a result which was then conveyed to the home countries as a more or less finished product. In Paris a new pattern was seen. The American delegation was accompanied by over 150 newspaper correspondents. They shocked the diplomats by demanding entrance to the opening session.

Even when their demands were resisted, the reporters were a factor in the event. Word of what was being proposed by one country or discussed by several would find its way to the correspondents, who would put it into their dispatches, which were then telegraphed to the home country to be published the next day in the newspapers. Over the same wires (but traveling the other way) came word of public reaction once the news was published. This increased the pressure on the statesmen in Paris, who in Britain, France and the United States (the victors) had to face the future prospect of elections and no-confidence votes. Just imagine how simple it would be for the editor of a tabloid newspaper to take fragmentary word of what was being discussed in Paris and use it to sell papers in London. As public opinion becomes more powerful, the incentives to engineer it also grow.

In the twentieth century we have the rise of the modern mass media—cinema, radio, television, followed by cable—all of them huge industries that are intimately connected to state power. So much so that the way you make a revolution in the twentieth century is not by storming the king’s castle but by taking over the broadcasting tower. The idea of the informed public and public opinion as the final court of appeal never got extinguished, but it had to compete with a related formation: the mass audience and the business of appealing to that.

The journalists formerly known as the media

But today the mass audience is breaking up. This makes new things thinkable. And that’s why I wrote my 2006 post, the People Formerly Known as the Audience:

The people formerly known as the audience wish to inform media people of our existence, and of a shift in power that goes with the platform shift you’ve all heard about. Think of passengers on your ship who got a boat of their own. The writing readers. The viewers who picked up a camera. The formerly atomized listeners who with modest effort can connect with each other and gain the means to speak— to the world, as it were.

Today I want to introduce a companion idea. Because the people formerly known as the audience have arrived, the journalists formerly known as “the media” are here, too. And this is what you—the next generation of professional journalists—have a chance to define for the rest of us. The digital revolution changes the equation. It brings forward a new balance of forces, putting the tools of production and the powers of distribution in the hands of the people formerly known as the audience. And so you have the opportunity to become the journalists formerly known as the media, carrier class for a new understanding of the people “out there” on the receiving end of what journalists make. I say “new,” but it is really just another chapter in the long struggle to make good on the idea of a public that knows what is happening because it pays attention, informs itself and argues about what should be done.

Let me try to sharpen what I mean by “the journalists formerly known as the media” by calling on one of my favorite lines in all of media studies. They originate with Raymond Williams (1921-1988) a writer and sociologist in the U.K. who was well known for his studies of mass media. “There are no masses, “ Williams wrote in 1958, “there are only ways of seeing people as masses.” To illustrate, Williams compared the way local newspapers addressed their readers—as inhabitants of a common world of homes, schools, jobs, streets they walked, politics they could participate in—to the way those same readers were addressed by the mass circulation dailies and tabloids that sell throughout the U.K.

Seeing people as masses is the art in which the mass media, and professional media people, specialized during their profitable 150-year run (1850 to 2000). But now we can see that this was actually an interval, a phase, during which the tools for reaching the public were placed in increasingly concentrated hands. Professional journalism, which dates from the 1920s, has lived its entire life during this phase, but let me say it again: this is what your generation has a chance to break free from. The journalists formerly known as the media can make the break by learning to specialize in a different art: seeing people as a public, empowered to make media themselves.

My advice…

Now I will explain what this phrase—seeing people as a public—means to journalists for your generation. Here are some of its implications.

1. Replace readers, viewers, listeners and consumers with the term “users.” What do we call the people on the other end of the journalism transaction? My suggestion is to be less platform-centric; rather than naming them for the tool you are using to reach them, just call them the users, a term I borrowed from the way Dave Winer employs it. Users is a more active identity, it works for all platforms, and as I said earlier: the way you imagine the users will determine how useful a journalist you will be.

2. Remember: the users know more than you do. I adapted this from Dan Gillmor’s famous declaration: “My readers know more than I do.” It means that, in the aggregate, the people on the receiving end have more knowledge, more contacts, more experience and more good ideas than a single journalist can ever have. This was always true, it was true in the 1950s, but the Internet allows those people-—the ones who know more than you do—to actually reach (and teach) you with that knowledge. Look at it this way: The most valuable thing the New York Times owns is its name and reputation. The second most valuable thing it has: the talent and experience of its staff. The third most valuable thing the Times “owns” is the knowledge and sophistication of its users. And if it cannot find a way to get some of that flowing in, so as to improve the editorial product, then it will have failed to capitalize on an immense strategic advantage. And I am convinced the editors of the Times know this.

3: There’s been a power shift; the mutualization of journalism is here. This is Alan Rusbridger’s idea: “the mutualised news organization.” He’s the editor of The Guardian in the U.K. What he means is…

We bring important things to the table – editing; reporting; areas of expertise; access; a title, or brand, that people trust; ethical professional standards and an extremely large community of readers. The members of that community could not hope to aspire to anything like that audience or reach on their own; they bring us a rich diversity, specialist expertise and on the ground reporting that we couldn’t possibly hope to achieve without including them in what we do.

We bring important things to the table, and so do the users. Therefore we include them. “Seeing people as a public” means that.

4: Describe the world in a way that helps people participate in it. When people participate, they seek out information. Information providers would do well to recognize this connection. As Itold The Economist:

My own view is that journalists should describe the world in a way that helps us participate in political life. That is what they are “for”. But too often they position us as savvy analysts of a scene we are encouraged to view from a certain distance, as if we were spectators to our own democracy, or clever manipulators of our fellow citizens. Weird, isn’t it?

As a writer for The Economist said after this was published: “Perhaps ‘political’ is unnecessarily limiting. More generally, it is the job of journalists to describe the world in a way that helps us participate in all life—political, local, civic, cultural, etc.” Correct.

5: Anyone can doesn’t mean everyone will. Students of social media and behavior on the Net are highly aware of the one percent rule, which has been observed in a wide variety of online settings:

It’s an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will ‘interact’ with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it… So what’s the conclusion? Only that you shouldn’t expect too much online. Certainly, to echo Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come. The trouble, as in real life, is finding the builders.

My way of putting this is, “anyone can doesn’t mean everyone will.” But the fact that “anyone can” is still important because you can never predict who will accept your invitation. Knowing this rule helps us keep our expectations in check. Seeing people as a public doesn’t mean deluding ourselves about what they are willing to do. It’s important to neither under-estimate nor over-estimate what the people formerly known as the audience are up for.

6: The journalist is just a heightened case of an informed citizen, not a special class. Journalism isn’t like brain surgery, or piloting a Boeing 747. A professional journalist knows how to get information, ask questions, tell stories and connect isolated facts. These are not esoteric or specialized skills, just heightened versions of things any smart citizen should be able to do. We see this most clearly when citizens have a chance to substitute for reporters and ask questions of candidates during debates. They generally do as well as or better than professional journalists. That is a clue.

7: Your authority starts with, “I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it.” If “anyone” can produce media and share it with the world, what makes the pro journalist special, or worth listening to? Not the press card, not the by-line, not the fact of employment by a major media company. None of that. The most reliable source of authority for a professional journalist will continue to be what James W. Carey called “the idea of a report.” That’s when you can truthfully say to the users, “I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it.” Or, “I was at the demonstration, you weren’t, let me tell you how the cops behaved.” Or, altering my formula slightly, “I interviewed the workers who were on that oil drilling platform when it exploded, you didn’t, let me tell you what they said.” Or, “I reviewed those documents, you didn’t, let me tell you what I found.” Your authority begins when you do the work. If an amateur or a blogger does the work, the same authority is earned. Seeing people as a public means granting that without rancor.

8: Somehow, you need to listen to demand and give people what they have no way to demand. The Web effortlessly records what people do with it. Therefore it is easy to measure user behavior: what people are interested in, what they are searching for, clicking on, turning to… right now. What should a smart journalists do with this “live” information? I just told you: you should listen to demand, but also give people what they have no way to demand because they don’t know about it yet. In fact, there is a relationship between these things. The better you are at listening to demand, the more likely it is that the users will listen to you when you demand of them: pay attention! You may not think this is important or interesting, but trust me… it matters. Or: “This is good.” Ignoring what the users want is dumb in one way; editing by click rate is dumb in a different way. Respect for the users lies in between these two. Get it?

9: In your bid to be trusted, don’t take the View From Nowhere; instead, tell people where you’re coming from. Treating people as a public means refusing to float “above” them. Instead of claiming that you have no view, no stake, no perspective, no (sorry for the academic term) situated self, try to level with the users and let them know where you are coming from. As David Weinberger puts it. “transparency is the new objectivity.” You may find that trust is easier to negotiate if you don’t claim the View from Nowhere, but instead tell them where you’re coming from. (Here’s my attempt to do exactly that as a critic.)

10: Breathe deeply of what DeTocqueville said: “Newspapers make associations and associations make newspapers.” Alexis De Tocqueville, a Frenchman, visited the United States in the 1830s. Among the observations he made was: “newspapers make associations and associations make newspapers.” What I think he meant was: wherever people have a common interest and wish to discuss it, there lies an opportunity for a smart journalist. Today one of the things that is fast changing our world is the falling cost for like minded people–people who share the same interest, problem or fascination–to locate each other, share information, pool what they know, and publish back to the world the results of their interactions. The Net makes this act increasingly common. For example, people with a health problem that medical science has been unable to treat will find each other over the Net and begin to discuss their condition. They’re an association. Smart journalists will pick up on this and realize: there’s a story there. Want to be useful online? Find a previously atomized group that shares a common interest and create a space for their association.

Is Hindi Daily Amar Ujala Scripting A Strategic Sale?

2010-09-10T13:07:00.000+05:30

I found this piece on vccircle.com. Is consolidation phase in print in offing?.

July 13 2010, 22:00:00 IST | SHRIJA AGRAWAL

Vernacular media houses may see headline action in consolidation plays.

Amar Ujala Publications Ltd, the privately owned newspaper group in which DE Shaw Composite Investments (Mauritius) Ltd invested $13.13 million for an 18% stake in 2006, is understood to have revived its plans for a strategic sale of flagship Amar Ujala, a Hindi daily with 18 editions in the northern parts of India.

The firm--in which 82% is held between Atul Maheshwari, his brother Rajul Maheshwari, Ashok Agarwal, who is the chairman of the firm, and his son Manu Anand—is India’s third-largest read daily in terms of “total” readership during 2007, according to the Indian Readership Survey.

Market is abuzz with talks that rival dailies Hindusthan and Dainik Jagran may be looking at the Amar Ujala pie. When contacted, Mr. RK Duggar, auditor, Amar Ujala, declined to comment on any talks of a sellout. A company spokesperson for Dainik Jagran declined to comment on the deal saying, " As a policy, we dont comment on market speculation."

There are enough reasons why a consolidation play may be at works in the vernacular media. Thanks to its digestible size, predictability in returns, cash rich regional players, private equity interest, global joint ventures and rising advertising revenues, regional print media players are now a much sought after asset by big media houses.

“One of the unstated objectives of Hindustan Media Ventures Limited (HMVL) IPO is that they want to pursue any consolidation opportunity that arises in the regional print media space. After the IPO, the holding of HT Media (promoters), in HMVL, will come down to 76%. However, there is enough scope for further dilution as Indian laws mandate a minimum promoter holding of 51%. We are of the view that HMVL will offer stock plus cash to acquire another
regional newspaper”, said an analyst with a Mumbai-based broking firm, who did not wish to be quoted.

Echoes Vinay Bhatia, Head, Investor Relations, HMVL, " One of the objectives for the IPO is that we will look at inorganic expansion and look at opportunities both in the mainstream and vernacular press. We will look at players who have top three positions in their space. But not that any deal is hot on the table or is in the works now."

Putting its faith in the language medium, private equity giant Blackstone recently invested $50 million or (Rs 250 crore) in Jagran Media Network for an undisclosed stake. Jagran Media Network (JMN) holds 55% stake in the listed entity JPL or Jagran Prakashan Limited. There is a high possibility of monies being used for inorganic expansion and acquiring powerful regional media properties.

The Lucrative UP Market

The sheer size of the Uttar Pradesh market, with a Hindi population of 160 million, could be a compelling driver. It is the most lucrative Hindi ad market in India with a size of Rs 750 crore. Print major Dainik Jagran continues to dominate with 50% ad market share while its readership share is close to 41%. The top three dailies control 83% of the readership in the state with Dainik Jagran commanding an AIR (Average Issue Readership) of 9 million, Amar Ujala at 6.5 million and Hindustan at 2.6 million.

Although Hindustan is a distant number three player in UP, it has gotten aggressive in the past three years and has launched at least five new editions. Amar Ujala is now caught between two listed aggressive players – Dainik Jagran and Hindustan, with the latter growing its readership at a rapid pace and Dainik Jagran holding on to its ad revenue market share.

Now, if Amar Ujala and Hindustan were to join hands, they will have a combined readership of 9.1 million which will be higher than Dainik Jagran. This will have a significant impact on the ad revenues of Jagran. If Amar Ujala were to go to Jagran, they will end up controlling more than 70% of the readership of the state and it will wipe away the dreams of Hindustan of becoming a formidable player in UP.

With this, only two viable options appear on the table: Either Amar Ujala goes for a listing (may be towards the end of this fiscal year) or it considers the option of consolidating with either Dainik Jagran or Hindustan.

The $12-billion Indian media and entertainment industry is expected to grow at 13% over the next five years, according to a FICCI-KPMG report. The buzz surrounding the regional print media consolidation just gets stronger with industry experts believing that it is more a need to fuel growth.

“Consolidation is needed. There are two big groups emerging – one with metro presence in large cities with no presence in hinterland and others like the Jagrans, the Patrikas, the Amar Ujalas. Given the way the readership trends are moving with metros still favouring the regional in a big way, I see more Mid-Day–Jagran kind of deals happening”, said Ashish Pherwani, Associate Director, Media & Entertainment Practise, Ernst & Young. In May this year, Jagran Prakashan, the publisher of the Hindi daily Dainik Jagran, acquired the print business of Mid-Day Multimedia for Rs 200 crore in an all-stock transaction by issuing new shares.

The Promising Jharkhand Market

Apart from Uttar Pradesh, one of the other key markets for the Hindi print medium is Jharkhand. In 2007, Jagran Prakashan (JPL) had almost acquired Prabhat Khabar (PK), the then second most read Hindi newspaper in Jharkhand. However, the deal could not go through. In Jharkhand, the top three daily newspapers control 90% of the readership amongst themselves. Hindustan is the most read newspaper in Jharkhand with a daily readership of 1.4 million, Prabhat Khabar of 1 million and Dainik Jagran 0.9 million.

Kamal Kumar Goenka, Managing Director, Prabhat Khabar said, “One cannot rule out the possibility of consolidation of marginal players as the costs are becoming high. At one point in 2007, even we wanted to get out of the business but it did not materialize as the promoters changed the mind at the last moment.” Goenka, however, added that if any offer was to come their way now, the promoters would not be considering a partial or a full sellout as they now consider this as their “core business”.

Apart from Prabhat Khabar fighting it out to keep it to the top position in Jharkhand with Hindustan and Jharkhand growing very competitive, Dainik Bhaskar has announced its plans of entering Jharkhand and Bihar by Diwali.

Prabhat Khabar, in anticipation, has already cut its cover price to Rs 2 in Ranchi (Prabhat Khabar’s strong foothold) and the others had to follow suit. Says Goenka, “We are one of the few unique players who are fighting it out with Hindustan and Jagran with Dainik Bhaskar also entering Jharkhand. But, we have a very strong foothold and our readership continues to grow in cities like Bokaro, Jamshedpur, Ranchi etc. Regional media will grow stronger and is here to stay."

If Jagran Prakashan were to revive the buy-out talks with Prabhat Khabar, the combined entity will have a readership of 1.83 million which is far higher than that of the leader, Hindustan, at 1.3 million. A consolidation could give Hindustan a controlling share in the region’s ad market share.

It now just remains to be seen who triggers the consolidation in the Hindi regional print space: Hindustan, Jagran Prakashan or Dainik Bhaskar.

“Apart from growing costs, or the decline of print media in the West, there is no proper succession planning for a lot of print media houses in India too. Any merger will add value not only in terms of readership and revenue market share but also drive synergies in terms of newsprint procurement, news gathering, printing and savings in employees cost”, said Rohit Dokania, lead analyst- media & telecom, B&K Securities.

How I Became a New Yorker Cartoonist: A Personal History

2010-09-02T08:13:00.002+05:30

by Robert Mankoff

The New Yorker has published over seventy-five thousand cartoons since 1925, but only a few hundred cartoonists have been responsible for more ninety-five per cent of them. So, how does one become one of the few hundred?

Here’s my story, some of it factual and some of it fanciful but all of it truthiful, at least as I misremember it. I expect it will fill aspirants to the cartoon life with either deep despair or shallow hope, depending on whether they look at the glass as being ninety-nine per cent empty or one per cent full. Regardless, my hope is that at least one young person will read this and be prevented from becoming a doctor or a lawyer.

The secret of my success was whatever aptitude I had for cartooning, combined with my ineptitude for everything else. I had failed as a welfare worker (and became eligible for benefits myself), as a teacher of speed-reading at a Catholic high school, and as a doctoral candidate in behavioral psychology, employing the same strategy I had used with the Catholic girls:

This last failure deeply disappointed my mother, Mollie, who had hoped she could one day exclaim,

Her name being Mollie, I was hoping she could be mollified. I tried the tack that I was merely switching from one “ology” to another. Instead of being a psychologist I would be a cartoonologist. She remained unmollified, but said, in her heavily unaccented English, that whatever I wanted to be was fine with her, even if it were a garbage man-so long, she specified, as I was the best garbage man.

Her unaccent was so strong that at first I couldn’t understand, but eventually I convinced her that becoming a cartoonist was less of a long shot than being the top garbage man in a city with more than eleven thousand sanitation workers.

My father was a tougher case. He couldn’t be mollified, and Louified isn’t even a word. When he heard I wanted to be a cartoonist, he solemnly declared, “You know, they already have people who do that.”

He was right, of course. There were no signs in The New Yorker indicating a shortage of people who did that.

But, I pointed out, one of them might die.

Thankfully, that wasn’t necessary. All that would be required was to start failing again, twice as hard, but at something I loved.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonists/2010/07/how-i-became-a-new-yorker-cartoonist.html#ixzz0yKuSXMOs

भैया, ये तो बता देते कि नया इनकम टैक्स कानून कब से लागू होगा

2010-08-27T18:28:00.000+05:30

आज सभी अखबारों ने पहले पेज इनकम टैक्स की स्लैब्स में बदलाव की खबर छापी है कि कैबिनेट ने इस मसौदे को मंजूरी दे दी है। लेकिन किसी ने यह बताने की जरूरत नहीं समझी कि यह लागू कब से होगा।
पाठकों के लिए सबसे महत्वपूर्ण इस खबर के साथ ऐसा ट्रीटमेंट निराशाजनक है।
फालतू के वैल्यू एडीशन पर समय व ऊर्जा जाया करने से बेहतर है कि 5W1H को ही खबर में सुनिश्चित कर लें।
क्या संपादकों, समाचार संपादकों आदि की समझ में यह बात आएगी?

एआईआर और टीआर की भूलभुलैया

2010-08-26T12:24:00.000+05:30

आजकल आईआरएस 2010 क्यू2 की धूम मची हुई है। हर अखबार इस सर्वे को अपने-अपने हिसाब से व्याख्यायित कर रहा है। सबने अपने अपने यहां इन व्याख्याओं को प्रकाशित किया। कोई एवरेज इश्यू रीडरशिप की बात कर रहा है तो कोई टोटल रीडरशिप की। पाठक का परेशान होना लाजिमी है। लेकिन यहां तो बेचारे पत्रकार और संपादक भी कन्फ्यूज हैं। वे अपने संस्थान की व्याख्या को रटे हुए हैं और इसलिए उनको दूसरों की व्याख्याएं गलत ही नहीं बल्कि हास्यास्पद भी लगती हैं। और इस क्रम में जब वे किसी जानकार आदमी से बात करते हैं तो वे खुद हंसी के पात्र बन जाते हैं। यह बात दीगर है कि वे बेचारे जान भी नहीं पाते कि वे अपनी अल्पज्ञता से हंसी के पात्र बन रहे। दरअसल सामने वाले जानकार की बातें मानने को ये सर्वज्ञ पत्रकार व संपादक तैयार ही नहीं होते और सामने वाला बेचारा चुप हो जाता है इस कहावत पर अमल करते हुए कि यदि आप किसी मूर्ख से बहस करेंगे तो दूसरे लोग यह नहीं जान पाएंगे कि मूर्ख कौन है।
और सबसे गजब कर रही हैं हिंदी की मीडिया साइट्स। ये साइट्स विभिन्न अखबारों में छपी रीडरशिप संबंधी खबरों को जस का तस अपने यहां पेस्ट कर दे रहे हैं। तो कहीं कोई अखबार चार करोड़ की पाठक संख्या वाला दिख रहा हैं तो वहीं वह अपनी खबर में एक करोड़ के आकड़े में बात कर रहा है। है न चकरघिन्नी बना देने वाला मामला।
जरूरी है कि कम से कम ये साइटें तो यह स्पष्ट करें कि एआईआर और टीआर होता क्या है।

क्या समाचार पत्रिकाएं अप्रासंगिक हो गईं हैं?

2010-08-18T21:40:00.000+05:30

प्रमोद जोशी

पूर्व वरिष्ठ स्थानीय सम्पादक, हिन्दुस्तान, दिल्ली

‘दिनमान’ ज्यादा वक्त चला नहीं। जब चलता था तो उसकी ‘टाइम’ या ‘न्यूज़वीक’ से तुलना की जाती थी। ‘दिनमान’ को पूरी तरह विकसित होने का या पूरी तरह समाचार पत्रिका बनने का मौका ही नहीं मिला। जब वह बंद हुआ तब तक दुनिया में समाचार पत्रिकाओं पर संकट के बादल नहीं थे। हिन्दी के अखबारों का तो विकास ही तभी से शुरू हुआ था। हांगकांग से निकलने वाली ‘फार ईस्टर्न इकोनॉमिक रिव्यू’ दिसम्बर 2009 में बंद हो गई। ‘एशियावीक’ बंद हुई। बहरहाल जिन समाचार पत्रिकाओं को हम मानक मान कर चलते थे, उनके बंद होने का अंदेशा कुछ सोचने को प्रेरित करता है।

अमेरिका की प्रतिष्ठित समाचार पत्रिका ‘न्यूज़वीक’ का सौदा हो गया। इसे ख़रीदने वाले 91 साल के सिडनी हर्मन हैं जो ऑडियो उपकरणों की कंपनी हर्मन इंडस्ट्रीज़ के संस्थापक हैं। वॉशिंगटन पोस्ट कम्पनी, जिसने ‘न्यूज़वीक’ को बेचा, ‘न्यूज़वीक’ अपने आप में और इसे खरीदने वाले सिडनी हर्मन तीनों किसी न किसी वजह से महत्वपूर्ण हैं। कैथरीन ग्राहम जैसी जुझारू मालकिन के परिवार के अलावा वॉशिंगटन पोस्ट के काफी शेयर बर्कशर हैथवे के पास हैं, जिसके स्वामी वॉरेन बफेट हैं। ‘न्यूज़वीक’ को ख़रीदने की कोशिश करने वालों में न्यूयॉर्क डेली न्यूज़ के पूर्व प्रकाशक फ्रेड ड्रासनर और टीवी गाइड के मालिक ओपनगेट कैपिटल भी शामिल थे। पर सिडनी हर्मन ने सिर्फ 1 डॉलर में खरीदकर इसकी सारी देनदारी अपने ऊपर ले ली है।

बताते हैं कि अब ‘न्यूज़वीक’ को मुनाफे के लिए प्रकाशित नहीं किया जाएगा। तो क्या घाटे के लिए प्रकाशित किया जाएगा? सिडनी हर्मन मशहूर दानी भी हैं। पर क्या वे किसी पत्रिका को घाटे में चलाकर अपने दान को पूरा करेंगे? न्यूज़वीक ही नहीं ‘टाइम’ पर भी संकट के बादल हैं। इसका प्रसार 42 लाख से घटकर 33 लाख पर आ गया है। इसके प्रकाशक टाइम वार्नर आईएनसी ‘टाइम’ को ही नहीं खुद को यानी पूरे प्रकाशन संस्थान को बेचना चाहते हैं।

‘न्यूज़वीक’ हर हफ़्ते प्रकाशित होती है। जैसाकि इसका नाम है यह खबरों से जुड़ी पत्रिका है। 17 फरवरी 1933 को जब यह शुरू हुई थी इसका नाम ‘न्यूज़-वीक’ था। न्यूज़ और वीक। 1937 में ‘टुडे’ नाम की पत्रिका इसमे समाहित हो गई। नया नाम हुआ ‘न्यूज़वीक’। 1961 में जब वॉशिंगटन पोस्ट कम्पनी ने इसे खरीदा तब खबरों को लेकर दुनिया बेहद संज़ीदा थी। कम्पनी ने 1982 में न्यूज़वीक ऑन एयर नाम से रेडियो प्रोग्राम भी शुरू किया, जो इस साल जून में बदल कर ‘फॉर योर ईयर्स ओनली’ कर दिया गया है। 2003 के बाद से ‘न्यूज़वीक’ के प्रसार मे कमी आने लगी। उस वक्त इसका सर्कुलेशन 40 लाख से ज्यादा था। अमेरिकी संस्करण के अलावा इसका एक अंतरराष्ट्रीय संस्करण है। साथ ही जापानी, कोरियन, पोलिश, रूसी, स्पेनिश, अरबी और तुर्की संस्करण भी हैं।

सन 2008 में पत्रिका का प्रसार 31 लाख से घटकर 26 लाख हुआ। जुलाई 2009 में 19 लाख और जनवरी 2010 में 15 लाख। इन दिनों और कम हुआ होगा। विज्ञापन मेंभी इसी तरह की गिरावट है। 2008 में इसका ऑपरेटिंग घाटा 1.6 करोड़ डॉलर था जो 2009 में बढ़कर 2.93 करोड़ डॉलर हो गया। 2010 के पहली तिमाही में यह 1.1 करोड़ डॉलर था। पत्रिका के संचालकों को लगा कि अपने आप में कुछ बदलाव करके शायद बचाव का रास्ता मिल जाय। इसलिए 14 मई 2009 के अंक से इसमें नाटकीय बदलाव किया गया। इसमें लम्बे लेखों की संख्या बढ़ाई गई। हार्ड न्यूज़ की जगह कमेंट्री और विश्लेषण को बढ़ाया गया। बहरहाल गिरावट रुकी नहीं।

‘न्यूज़वीक’ के स्वामी इसकी रक्षा करना चाहते थे, पर इसके लिए वे जो भी कदम उठा रहे थे वे उल्टे पड़ रहे थे। इसलिए इसे बेचने का फैसला कर लिया गया। वॉशिंगटन पोस्ट के मुख्य कार्यकारी डॉनल्ड ग्राहम ने कहा, "हमें न्यूज़वीक के लिए एक ऐसा ख़रीददार चाहिए था जो उच्चस्तरीय पत्रकारिता की अहमियत उसी तरह महसूस करता हो जैसे हम करते हैं।" न्यूज़वीक के साथ 300 कर्मचारी जुड़े़ हुए हैं। विज्ञापनों में कमी और इंटरनेट पर मुफ़्त में उपलब्ध खबरों के ‘न्यूज़वीक’ को भारी नुक़सान हुआ।

कारोबार के मामले में ‘न्यूज़वीक’ हमेशा ‘टाइम’ से पीछे रही, पर उसकी अलग तरह की अंतरराष्ट्रीय छवि है। इन दोनों अमेरिकी पत्रिकाओं के मुकाबले इंग्लैंड की पत्रिका ‘इकोनॉमिस्ट’ की पहचान अलग तरह की है। फ्री ट्रेड और वैश्वीकरण के पक्ष में उसका एक वैचारिक स्टैंड है, जिसपर वह काफी ज़ोर देती है। उसकी खासियत है कि उसमें एक भी बाइलाइन नहीं होती। इसके संचालकों की मान्यता है कि हमारे स्टैंड सामूहिक हैं। इसके सम्पादक को केवल एक बार, जब वह रिटायर होने वाला होता है, अपने नाम से लिखने का मौका मिलता है। विशेष सर्वे और बाहर से आमंत्रित लेखों पर ही लेखक का नाम दिया जाता है। ‘इकोनॉमिस्ट’ अपने आप को ‘न्यूज़पेपर’ कहता है मैगज़ीन नहीं।

‘न्यूज़वीक’ के बारे में अच्छी बात यह है कि उसे सिडनी हर्मन ने खरीदा है, जो लालची दुकानदार नहीं हैं। हो सकता है कि वे पत्रिका को बचा लें। इससे क्या होगा? कुछ लोगों की नौकरियाँ बचेंगी। यह बात अपनी जगह ठीक है। पर क्या वे ‘न्यूज़वीक’ के पुराने स्वरूप को बचा पाएंगे? हालांकि वह रूप बदल चुका है, पर अब भी वह समाचार पत्रिका है। पाठकों को क्या समाचार पत्रिका नहीं चाहिए? न्यूज़ मैगज़ीन केवल खबर ही नहीं देती विचार भी देती है। इंटरनेट पर समाचार और विचार काफी उपलब्ध है, पर वह बिखरा हुआ है। उसे सुगठित और साखदार होने में समय लगेगा। उसका आसान रास्ता यही है कि प्रिंट की साखदार संस्थाएं जल्द से जल्द नेट पर आएं।

‘इकोनॉमिस्ट’ को पढ़ने वाले उसे उसके वैचारिक दृष्टिकोण के कारण पढ़ते हैं। वैसे ही जैसे ‘मंथली रिव्यू’ या ‘ईपीडब्ल्यू’ को पढ़ते हैं। सामग्री कागज़ पर मिले या नेट पर इससे फर्क नहीं पड़ता। फर्क पड़ता है जब किसी संस्था के साथ समाज के अंदर से एक परम्परा ग़ायब होने लगती है। ‘दिनमान’ के दौर में एक पीढ़ी तैयार हुई। जब तक यह पीढ़ी आगे कुछ करती ‘दिनमान’ नहीं बचा। ‘इकोनॉमिस्ट’, ‘ईपीडब्ल्यू’ ‘मंथली रिव्यू’, ‘न्यूयॉर्कर’ और ‘न्यू स्टेट्समैन’ नेट पर भी उपलब्ध हैं। तकनीक शायद और बदलेगी, पर मनुष्य की बुनियादी बैचारिक चाहत कहीं न कहीं कायम रहेगी। ‘न्यूज़वीक’ और ‘टाइम’ को भी अपने आर्थिक मॉडल बदलने होंगे। अच्छी बात यह है कि इन संस्थाओं को बचाने वाली ताकतें इन देशों में हैं। हमारे देश में भी ऐसी ताकतों को होना चाहिए, जो वैचारिक कर्म की अवमानना रोकें। हमें वैचारिक कर्म की ज़रूरत है। वही हमें गलत रास्ते पर जाने से बचाएगा।

Courtsey - samachar4media.com

लेबल संपादकीय कंटेंट के लिए

2010-08-15T08:17:00.001+05:30

टामस्काट.काम पर बहुत ही सटीक लेबल मैने देखे संपादकीय कंटेंट के लिए। ये लेबल कंटेंट के साथ देने की हिम्मत शायद ही कोई संपादक कर पाए लेकिन ये लेवल सच्चाई के बहुत करीब हैं। अखबार में अधिकतर सामग्री की गुणवत्ता इन लेबलों से परिभाषित की जा सकती है। कुछ चुनिंदा लेबल अपने पाठकों के लिए हम यहां दे रहे हैं.....

अपने यहां के अधिकतर पत्रकारों इंटरव्यू सबसे आसान काम लगता है(जबकि यह सबसे कठिन काम है)। वे सुकई से लेकर ओबामा तक इंटरव्यू बहुत आसानी से कर सकते हैं। दलाई लामा से दो घंटे बात कर सकते हैं और स्टीफेन हाकिंग का इंटरव्यू शायद उनके लिए बाएं हाथ का खेल है। इसलिए ऐसे इंटरव्यू पर यह टैग मुफीद रहेगा।

सूचना और स्टोरी के बीच अंतर हम समझते ही नहीं और प्रेस रिलीज व सूचनाओं को भी हम स्टोरी में गिनते हैं।

आकड़ों से खोलने में हम माहिर हैं...कहीं से कुछ कुछ मिला....किसी ने कोई आकड़े बता दिए....नेट पर कहीं कोई सर्वे मिल गया....हो गई हमारी एक्सक्लूसिव।

विश्वस्त सूत्र तो हमारी पत्रकारिता का आधार हैं। हम अपनी एनालिसिस या दिमागी खिचड़ी को इन्ही विश्वस्त सूत्रों के सहारे पाठकों को परोसते रहते हैं। यह लेबल अगर ऐसे कंटेट पर लगा दिया जाए तो बेचारे पाठक मूर्ख बनने से शायद बच जाएं।

टीपू सुलतानों की तो हमारे यहां कमी ही नहीं है। कम पढ़े जाने वाले अखबार, वेबसाइट व पत्रिकाएं हमारे टीपू सुलतानों का प्रमुख अस्त्र हैं। स्टोरी तो हमारे कंप्यूटर में रेडीमेड पड़ी रहती है, संपादक ने आदेश किया नहीं कि तारीख व कुछ नाम बदलकर स्टोरी तैयार।

On Shaping The History Of Pakistan

2010-08-15T07:48:00.000+05:30

By Tahir Qazi, MD

14 August, 2010
Countercurrents.org

The 14th of August 2010 marks 63rd birthday of Pakistan. On the first day of August, the Ambassador of Pakistan to the US confidently announced on CNN, “When I go back to being a professor, I will certainly teach history but right now, I’m working along with my colleagues in the US government and trying to shape history ….” The statement bears an awe inspiring elitism and intellectual arrogance.

The age of Twitter has distorted the Pakistani Ambassador’s sense of history and historic processes. Deluded into thinking that he is shaping history, he does not realize that Pakistan is bobbing in the ocean of history whose currents he does not and cannot control; to paraphrase famous remarks of German chancellor Bismark.

Nonetheless, the statement rings an odd truth about Pakistan that the history of Pakistan is mostly ‘Made in America’. Pakistani leaders have been trying to shape the history of their nation for a long time from Jeddah to London to Washington, virtually from everywhere but Pakistan.

Recent billions worth of US aid for Pakistan will advance the history of Pakistan, presumably, in a positive direction. However, one should bear in mind that US congress passed a bill, not too long ago, that tied aid to any country with the security interests of the US. It is still unclear whether the two nations will be able to successfully align their interests at this time. One may have to fathom past security relations between Pakistan and the US to see if future proceeds of history for Pakistani nation will be any different

Apart from emerging pressures of globalization, currently for international relations, nation-states lean on Westphalian system, a series of treaties in Europe in the seventeen century. Contrarily, history has witnessed that all nations have not always behaved justly or ethically and all nations have not been equal in vision, resources and ambitions. Nation-states are generally stiff competitors in mutual relations. It is the competition for securing interests that determines policies and relations. However, Francis Fukuyama asserts that one of the fundamentals of collective psyche of strong nations is ‘megalothymia’. It is an enduring but equally devastating character.

Among the powerful nations those who ventured out for variety of reasons have learned that subjugating another nation is not easy. However, powerful nations learned from history better than their cohorts. It is well understood that it is economical to leave implementation of desired policies in the hands of local aristocrats who, by definition, cannot be democrats even if they wear the cloak of democracy.

Generalization aside, Pakistan has never ensconced culturally or economically ever since its birth. Economically, it has been borrowing money indiscriminately. It is hard to assume that borrowing would not have had any strings attached. Culturally, it has tried to find identity in the Middle Eastern religion – Islam. Islam in Pakistan turned out be as sensitive an issue as ethnicity. Who is a Muslim? Nobody knows but Ahmadies are non-Muslim was the hopeless answer. Pakistan imported the national language from India but it has trodden in bewilderment on defining self-identity as animosity against India. Pakistan has fought wars against India that were dubbed as religious Jihad. Pakistan lost those Jihad-wars. Clandestine and unending Jihad in Kashmir has taken various forms according to the ambitions of an unrestrained military; not to mention brutality of military in the then East Pakistan, Bangladesh now.

The idea that India is the arch enemy of Pakistan served military very well. It did not allow open civilian discussion to sort out foreign relations. In the name of Indian threat, boundless growth of military was to become one the biggest future enemies of Pakistan. It evolved as the most powerful institution in Pakistan and perhaps it is equally true that wars with India broke out because militarism was the only available vision in the newly formed Pakistan. During this life span, military has ruled the country for half the time and controlled the politics when not directly at the helm. The bond between military and religious forces has palpable social consequences.

Islamist religious forces in Pakistan had long understood that only way to assert Islam is to take control of the state-instruments. These forces have always been lurking to avail any chance moral or otherwise. Islam availed itself to be played upon to the fullest in the hands of feudal, aristocrats and bureaucrats in an oligarchic nexus with military. Collectively, they fed religious fervor to the poor masses with help of mosque and mullah. The constellation of these players, among other things, has shaped social imperatives of history thus far.

Growth of Madrassa-system in past decades is not a coincidence. According to one estimate the number of madrassas in Pakistan was more than 40000 sometime ago. External factors aside, among the material conditions that led to the rise of madrassa-system, arguably poverty contributed a great deal. 97% of enrollment in madrassas comes from poor families for state run school system had collapsed. Madrassas offer free religious education and bear the cost of living too. Corrupt politicians and military also preyed upon raw religious sentiments, particularly among disenfranchised youth.

Culturally, Pakistan is a nation lost in search of its identity. There is not much evidence that social superstructures will change for the better any time soon because the underlying material conditions remain unchanged. Pakistan is now a failed state by every definition. Even though foreign aid has been rolling in for past many years, yet no economic, social or political indicator has moved to ring any optimistic note.

It is not very comforting to see that Pakistan, on literacy ranking, is among bottom 20 countries in the world. Pakistan shares this distinction with Afghanistan and Ethiopia among others. Investment on education in Pakistan ranks among bottom 30 countries in the world. Mounting public debt and servicing debt is the biggest expenditure followed by military budget, virtually leaving little for social development. One could actually draw a parallel between economic decline and rise of ideological fervor in Pakistan fairly easily. Vaccuum created by the failure of secular forces is filled by fanatic religious forces.

The past trends are actually a dilemma for the future history. The assumptions embedded in the above data are not much analeptic for the future proceeds. The question that comes to the fore rather vividly is this: as to what degree the past is a sign of permanence and how to be optimistic in disaffection with the past trends?

History that always moves in a certain inherited framework is free to be conceived by anyone in any number of ways. However, one cannot escape the element of time that serves as the stage where agents of history operate at a particular moment. It provides an angle to analyze the current events too.

The religious conception of history is paradoxical. Religiously motivated persons are mostly willing to sacrifice the present at the altar of history. There are large numbers of educated and uneducated people who look to the past to resolve contemporary issues or perceived problems of the future. These are psychological root of fundamentalism. It is a religiously motivated vision that does espouse contemporary solutions and is intolerant of resolution in the context of the present. But religious or ideological intolerance is hardly ever monolithic. To become violent, it has to blend with at least one or two currents of contemporary history as it did in Pakistan.

In the current milieu provincialism is rife and sectarianism drips blood of Ahmadies in mosques and Christians in churches and Data Durbar is desecrated. In the past some time, countless people of Shia persuasion have been gunned down and Karachi is still mourning the political mass murders. It is a history of Pakistan that is being written with the blood of innocent people in every neighborhood and street right now.

It is hard to change religious ideology. However, it is possible to contain intolerance, if not eliminate it altogether. The idea of changing material conditions of societies upon which ideologies operate offers the biggest hope for changing the future. This idea deserves separate inquiry; suffice to say that No-War Pact with India will help trim military spending, which is again revised upward for the year 2010-11. This step alone will ease up budgetary constraints on social spending. Establishing free trade zones with immediate neighbors and large scale student exchange program with India would go a long way.

Sermons of change cultivate only false hopes. Practical steps towards changing material relations are the only way of transforming fates of nations. In Conflict, Crises & War in Pakistan, Kalim Siddiqui concludes, “History seldom forgives those who make a habit of tolerating an incompetent, corrupt and self-perpetuating oligarchy”. Military oriented economy, inept political clout, corruption to the core and militant ideological trajectory in Pakistan have material reasons and tangible momentum at this stage of history and there is no end in sight. Hopefully, the ambassador of Pakistan to the US will reveal the secret how is he shaping the future history of Pakistan?

Dr. Tahir Qazi is a neurophysiologist, freelance writer and public speaker on subjects like religion and global poverty. He is involved in exploring ways to change human conditions. His interests range from philosophy to economics and religion to psychology. He can be reached at: tahir.qazi@yahoo.com

Why can't media companies diversify?

2010-07-20T10:46:00.000+05:30

Most media firms still get a bulk of their revenues and profits from one media - sometimes from one brand

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar / New Delhi July 20, 2010, 0:22 IST

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/vanita-kohli-khandekarcan/t-media-companies-diversify/401849/

The Indian media and entertainment space is booming. There are lots of growth opportunities in print, TV, films, mobile, the Net, et al. And Indian media companies are diversifying into other areas successfully
That is what the first few pages of most investor documents, strategy presentations or business plans in this space say.

It is not quite true.

Look at the table that goes with this column today. It lists, arguably, India’s top-10 media companies by their revenues. Each of them is ostensibly diversified into various other media. (Click here for table http://www.business-standard.com/general/pdf/072010_01.pdf)

But a closer look reveals that most of them still get a bulk of their revenues and profits from one media — sometimes from one brand. The Times Group, for example, is still largely about print and The Times of India. It has interests in TV, the Internet and radio, but together these bring in less than one-fifth of its revenues. The Zee Group is largely about television, either the broadcast or distribution of it. HT Media is still largely about the Hindustan Times and print and so on.

There is nothing wrong about this. Globally, most large media companies find it very difficult to have a go at another media successfully. Metro (a hugely successful free newspaper), Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, all came out of the blue.

This is not about old or new media, youth or age, ability or the lack of it. It is about focus. The rule, it seems, is this — every media creates its own pioneers and leaders and more often than not they are unknowns.

In the early 90s, Subhash Chandra and Kalanithi Maran came out of nowhere to create two of the largest broadcasting companies in India — Zee and Sun — even while the opportunity was staring at every major publishing baron in the country. Rediff, Naukri and others have become the biggest companies on the Internet when big media was ignoring it.

However, it is this very success which becomes a limiting factor. Not only because it may inhibit risk-taking, but also because the heart, mind and soul of a company are coded in one media. Any senior manager at The Times Group will tell you that the heart of its owners is in the newspaper business. Zee may invest in a whole lot of things — radio, newspapers, the Internet — but its focus will be its TV business. So, the context from which many of these companies view growth is the context in which they were successful. Nothing then seems as exciting.

Imagine that you are Samir Jain, the vice chairman and chief strategist of The Times Group. When the top line from your flagship brand is more than the whole Internet advertising pie in India, why would it interest you? That makes it difficult to give money, time and resources to a business.

Eventually though, most companies do it, as international examples show. Even now, News Corporation is better known for tabloids such as the Sun and the News of the World. The fact is that its television business brings in 45 per cent of its revenues and the rest comes from films and publishing.

However, this kind of robust diversification happens when new minds come to the helm or the market conditions change dramatically — something we are seeing in the newspaper and television industries in India. In both these businesses even as the environment has changed dramatically — more competition, consumers migrating to other media, etc. — a whole new generation of owners/managers has taken over. They may well take the diversification game to the next level.

A SCOLDED TIMES OF LONDON EDITOR SWAPS HUMBLE PIE FOR A SLICE OF TORTILLA

2010-07-14T13:04:00.000+05:30

The Editor of The Times got yesterday this letter from a well known reader, Miriam Gonzalez, DeputyPrime Minister Nick Clegg Spanish wife:

Sir, Now that Spain has won the World Cup and Iker Casillas demonstrated on Sunday that he is an outstanding goalkeeper regardless of whether his girlfriend, Sara Carbonero, watches him from the touchline or not, it may be time for you to eat a bit of humble pie. Trying to blame Sara for Spain’s initial lacklustre performance while she was simply doing her job (“Spanish inquisition blames WAG after Swiss vanquish the favourites”, June 17) was not worthy of a newspaper that should treat women for who they are and not simply for what their male partners do. Miriam Gonzalez, London SW15

James Harding, the Editor, has replied to Ms González:

“Congratulations on your team’s victory in the World Cup. You in particular will be glad to know that we scrupulously recognise women for what they are and not what their partners do. We are not over fond of humble pie but if you, Sara Carbonero or Iker Casillas are ever passing, please do drop by for a slice of tortilla.”

(Courtesy - innovations in newspapers)

In Print Media We Trust

2010-07-13T16:04:00.002+05:30

In Print Media We Trust

View more presentations from webmedia.

The newspaper disease

2010-07-13T15:32:00.000+05:30

I CAME ACROSS THIS VERY INTERESTING AND INSIGHTFUL PIECE ON ROGERBLACK.COM BY ROGER BLACK.....

INSIDE AND OUTSIDE of the paper, there’s no confusion about who the paper belongs to. Not the editors who built it, not the reporters who fill it with articles, but the men who bought and paid for it. - David Carr

This was the killer graph of David Carr’s mournful recent column,“At the Journal, the Words Not Spoken.” There are two big assertions here—ones that helped cause the great slide in the newspaper business. First, Carr implies newspapers are for the newsroom, not for the readers. And second, he suggests that there’s something wrong with the owners of a paper actually running it.

These are wrong ideas, ones that have tripped up journalism over the last 50 years, setting a fluid, dynamic business like concrete, into a stiff, unresponsive institution. J-school defined the methodology; the unions dictated the job descriptions; and the big chains, with their organization charts and greed did the rest.

Reporters, led by The Newspaper Guild, acted on the assumption that their profession was as permanent as that of doctors and lawyers, and as such, could survive all kinds of specialization, never mind featherbedding. More than a profession, the newsroom was convinced that journalism was a public trust, which implies that the public was somehow complicit in this. Journalists believed that they had deserved this trust. The business was so good that the permanence of their social institution was taken for granted.

Of course the public was involved in the deal, but not in the way journalists came to think. People bought the newspapers, not so much because they needed them, but because they liked them. Newspapers were useful, yes, and even necessary during wars and recessions, but people paid money for them because they were interesting and sometimes fun.

The 1920s-style, general-assignment reporter (cf., The Front Page) who could cover anything and write it up beautifully, all the while drinking heavily, was actually interested in selling newspapers. He (and it was mostly male in those days, notwithstanding His Girl Friday, the remake of The Front Page, starring Rosalind Russell) took delight in a zesty mix of cranks, crackpots, clowns and crooked politicians. Newspapers ran the photo of plane crashes, the maps of battles, the profiles of movie queens and breakaway baseball players and random escaped zoo animals. There were not a lot of correspondents down at the city hall waiting for press releases.

They had competition at the beginning, but it was with other newspapers that might have writers who would occasionally be guilty of juicing up a quote to make a better read. Or worse. This underpaid hack was gradually replaced by a better-trained, more responsible specialist who turned in less copy. The rewrite desk, with wordsmiths in the “slot,” was abolished. By the time I started working on newspapers in school, the daily had become a boring update on minor changes to the social status quo, crime and traffic stories, and an occasional big “enterprise” piece that reminded you of a chapter in your social studies textbook.

Radio, TV and then the Internet carved away the assumed franchise and started to sap the great profits that the newspaper owners had gotten used to. In the last quarter, the newspaper decline seems to have taken a steeper dive, and some senior news executives doubt that they’ll be able to pull up before the revenue line crashes below the expenses line.

As with the federal government, it won’t help to keep doing more of the things that aren’t working. It won’t work to keep cheapening the product. To use Gordon Bethune’s line about a similar problem in the airline business: “You can take so much cheese off the pizza that nobody will eat it.”

A New York Times employee told me this weekend that an editor at NYTimes.com can’t put copy on the web site. Only a “producer” can do that. This is a perfect example of running newspapers like they were permanent fixtures on the landscape that could be loaded with all kinds of redundant job descriptions and still stand up. The designer who told me this probably has a better idea of what to do to turn around the paper than does Arthur Sulzberger, along with all of his sisters and his cousins and his aunts.

What is needed is a fundamental restructuring of the newspaper business. And it has gotten too late to expect the inmates to redesign the asylum. It’s going to have to be done by the proprietors. Willful, single-minded, near-genius proprietors like the ones who built the business. Sam Zell may not be the man to do it. He has not reduced the insanity at the Tribune Company no matter how many have quit or been laid off or fired. But he’s in a better position to fix the problem than the McCormick and Chandler heirs, or the stagnant old managers, or the stultified newsrooms in L.A. or Chicago (unionized or not).

Newspapers have about a year to get rid of all the people who can’t pull their own weight and to redeploy all the smart energetic journalists who can find the great stories and push them out to print, web and video. Some papers still have lots of talent, but they must push it to the front so readers can find it and find that they like it. Papers which continue to bury the smart people (or have already driven them away) will not make the cut. With the current recession, if newspapers don't move quickly, the market will crush them.

Rupert Murdoch knows something about markets and about restructuring (e.g., The Wapping dispute, 1986). He has a better chance of saving The Wall Street Journal than the Bancroft heirs did. Taking a page or two out of the Hearst or Pulitzer or Thomson books, Murdoch can work quickly and instinctively to change the paper. He already has by putting in more non-business news. Whether he is on the right track, time will tell. But I wouldn’t bet against him. Nor would I assume that “the Dirty Digger,” as they called him when he arrived in London, doesn’t understand good journalism. He is a born journalist. He takes great risks and will support great reporting, even when the establishment is pushing against him and the lawyers are lined up at the gate. (I was at the old New West when they did a piece on Jim Jones, whose legacy is the horrible “drinking the Kool Aid.” Murdoch owned New York and New West then, and when a number of California big wigs tried to get the magazine to stop the investigation, Murdoch said, “If you’ve got the goods, print the story. I’ll back you up.”) That’s what sells papers.

Whether the Times will counter by out-reporting and out-writing the Journalon its own turf—business—is unlikely, but that would be an easier goal than Murdoch’s. This competition might save both papers’ business propositions.

The reporters and editors of The Wall Street Journal, of all papers, should know this, and know about the value and rights of private property. If they had been truly watching the markets, they would have known that the newspaper business is in a tailspin, and unlikely to pull out of it. They should have been ready for the crash.

ABOUT ROGER BLACK IN HIS OWN WORDS.....

SINCE 1970, I’ve been involved in the design of the content-based media (as distinguished from entertainment or advertising). I’ve lead redesigns at Newsweek, Esquire and even the Reader’s Digest. Some still bear evidence of that effort. Others have moved on. As Lloyd Ziff once put it, “a design is like the sifting sands of the Sahara.”

For the first 15 years I was a staffer, and had the great fortune to work for the best and smartest people in the business—Jann Wenner, Lou Silverstein, Abe Rosenthal and Rick Smith.

Since going out on my own in 1989, I’ve been hired by a number of brilliant clients—Terry McDonell, John Carroll, and Matt Winkler, among them. I was able to work on early important web sites, like MSNBC.com, Discovery.com, and @Home. I’ve designed newspapers in Houston, Zurich and Singapore, and was present at the launch at Fast Company, Smart Money and Rove.

This experience has provided some stimulating cross-pollination for me. I’ve learned something about what works, and which direction things are going. Right at the moment, it seems to be attracting a number of very interesting assignments, and my work has never been challenging or more fun.

GREAT IDEA!!!!!

2010-07-05T16:30:00.000+05:30

The Times London is celebrating 70 yrs of its letter to editor section.
It carried out special section of 16 pages SIR on this occasion.

The paper gives some interesting facts:

23% from London.

4% from Scotland.

3% from wales.

1% from North Ireland.

84% from men.

15% from women.

66 letters received by post each day on average.

424 e-mail letters received each day on average, not counting the junk.

16 letters a day are published on average (the section has been expanded in the last few months. Smart move!)

65,051 letters received by the Letters department in 1985, The Time’s bicentenary year.

180,000 letters a year received now.

2,010 number of word, on average, printed on the letters page every day. That’s 12,061 words a week.

143 words, average letter printed (versus the Twitter’s 140 characters)

11,071 the longest letter printed in The ties, published on October 13, 1898 with an account of the Dreyfus case.

89% of chosen letters appear on the page within three days of arriving.

32% appear within one day of arriving.

3,2% of letters received make it to print -that’s a1 in 31

So, on November 14, 2009 the Times printed this letter:

“Sir, My brothers and I have for years agreed that if one has a letter published in The Times the others must each give him a bottle of champagne (double if it is not spotted). Historically I have been the loser, but publication of this helps to restore the balance. Lord Justice Scott Baker”

In our country, letter writting was treated as a highly intellectual .activity. Letter writters were very respectable people in society. I have come across very good journalists in upcountry who started as letter writers and their letters were so good, editors offered them to become fulltime reporters. Khandwa, Ratlam, Mandsore, Hoshangabad, Katni, Kanpur, Sitapur, Lakhimpur, Kodarma, Garhwa, Daltonganj, Deoghar are such towns where one can find such journalists. But unfortunately, letter space in newspapers got squeezed and letter writers shunted out since last 10 yr or so.

I find it very foolish of newspapers owners and editors who talk about reader connectedness and on the other hand keep on cropping letter space.

Newspaper of the Future

2010-07-04T13:33:00.000+05:30

1.) It will have fewer pages and be physically smaller (perhaps tabloid) in size.

2.) It will have longer articles that offer more in-depth reporting an analysis.

3.) It will be precisely targeted, either in terms of geographical area or interest.

4.) It will have a vivid voice, which will provoke reader reaction.

5.) It will be sleekly designed.

6.) It will have a web component that will complement, not duplicate its contents.

7.) It will either be free or more expensive than today's papers.

8.) It may not be on paper at all. It may be on some sort of portable device. Newspaper publishers have invested for years in flexible, e-paper displays that feel like newsprint but update like websites. None of the projects have come to fruition ... yet.

9.) Its readers may not be united by geography. They may be a community of interest or enthusiasm.

10.) It will shift and evolve rapidly, as its readers' needs shift and evolve.

Britons prefer to buy newspapers rather than pay for online news

2010-07-03T18:31:00.000+05:30

Readers in the United Kingdom are willing to pay for print newspapers but not for online content, a YouGov SixthSense report revealed.

Compared with 83 percent of readers that refuse to pay for online news, the study found that two thirds of readers would buy a "good newspaper," NewMediaAge reported. Only 4 percent would be willing to pay for online information if a quality newspaper was not available.

No pay for online papers

Wed, 30/06/2010 - 13:00
by Alex Hourdakis and YouGov SixthSense

The emergence of ‘freesheets’, such as City AM (pictured) or Metro, over the last few years has provided yet another challenge to the beleaguered ‘traditional newspaper’ business model. A YouGov SixthSense report into UK media consumption habits has found that the majority of UK adults are willing to continue paying for traditional newspapers, in stark contrast with their apparent unwillingness to pay for online newspaper content.
The report found that 60% of UK adults think that it is worth paying for a ‘good newspaper’. While 18% of the respondents cannot see the point of paying for a newspaper, nearly half (44%) prefer paying for a newspaper because ‘the free ones haven’t got as much real content’. Half of the respondents seem not to trust free papers as much, agreeing that the quality of a publication is reflected by the amount paid, although 38% of respondents believe that traditional newspapers are currently too expensive.
Interestingly, men and women seem to have different approaches to paying for newspapers, with a higher proportion of men than women thinking it is worth paying for a ‘good publication’. 70% of men aged between 16 and 24 think it is worth paying, compared with 56% of women in the same age group.
The story is very different when it comes to paying for online content. A vast majority (83%) replied that they would refuse to pay, with only two percent of respondents willing to shell out for online content in the current format. Only four percent would pay for online even when the content in question was not available anywhere else.
However, there does seem to be some future hope on the horizon for companies moving towards the online subscription model, especially among the young - a comparatively large ten percent of 16-24 year olds say they would ‘definitely pay’ for online access to newspapers.

LA Times fools readers with dramatic advertorial

2010-07-03T18:25:00.000+05:30

It is not only in india, paid news are everywhere be fooling readers. This is an interesting post by Carole Wurzelbacher on editorsweblog....

The Los Angeles Times recently ran a convincing advertorial claiming that parts of Universal Studios had been destroyed by a mysterious attack, reports Los Angeles Observed. The ad, which was designed to fool readers in thinking it was a legitimate story being reported by LA Times, featured articles with headlines such as "Universal Studios Hollywood Partially Destroyed" and the absurd "Colossal Footprints Found on Beach."
The only indication that the advertorial was in fact fake was the word "advertisement" written in small red letters under the page title that announced the "LATExtra" section. Overall, considering that the advertisement exactly resembles a Times publication with only a tiny indication that it isn't, the advertisement seems to be specifically designed to mislead readers.

The LA Times advertorial has already created a good deal of backlash. Charles Apple, writing for Visual Editors, calls the ad a "four-page wrap in which advertising copy is masquerading as news - once again - in the once-respectable Los Angeles Times." Apple expresses further astonishment at the ad, quoting an "anonymous tipster" who reported that the ad was wrapped around the paper for home subscribers, making the ad the first part of the newspaper subscribers saw when they picked up the morning paper.

Moreover, LA Observed reports, 5 members of the LA County Board of Supervisors have already signed a protest letter asking the Sam Zell, owner of the Times, to "stop selling its front pages to advertisers, especially in such an offensive and alarming manner."

Advertorials have been for some time a point of ethical contestation. Notably, the Detroit Free Press also came under criticism when it took story suggestions from an advertiser. When it was facing uncomfortably low circulation figures, the DFP took a story suggestion from Humana, which then bough advertising space next to the article.

In response to the Times debacle, Times publisher Eddy Hartenstein is quoted on an LAT blog saying "The Universal Studios Hollywood ad wrapping Thursday's LATExtra section met our advertising guidelines, including a large red 'advertisement' notification at the top of the page."

Writing for LA Observed, Kevin Roderick summed up the advertising debacle quite succinctly: "It all brings to mind the editor's expressed desire to 'own Hollywood coverage' . . . or is it the other way around?"

NEWSPAPERS : Home delivery to pdfs

2010-07-03T18:08:00.000+05:30

Sam, Zell, Tribune Group’s owner, that include big guns like Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, leads a newspaper company with great vision…

He recently voiced his opinion about the future of newspapers on CNBC.

Reflecting on the future, said “going forward, it’s going to require all kinds of different approaches, including probably most significant, the elimination of home delivery and the replacement of it by PDFs.”

What Skills Will Future Journalists Need?

2010-06-28T20:59:00.000+05:30

A multitasker, juggling various responsibilities and roles, many which may have nothing to do with "traditional" journalism.
Technologically savvy, having at least a basic understanding of programming, web tools, and web culture.
A gatekeeper for a particular beat, directing readers to the most current and trustworthy news, regardless of who wrote it or where it's housed.
A versatile storyteller, who knows how to present a story online in various formats.
A brand and a community manager, who cultivates a constant and interactive conversation with their readership.

The best quotes

ये सभी कोट्स अमेरिका से हैं क्योंकि हमारे भारत में विश्वविद्यालयों के पत्रकारिता विभाग गई-गुजरी फैकल्टीज के हवाले हैं और उनमें यह औकात नहीं कि वे पत्रकारिता को दिशा दे सकें। यह स्थिति बहुत दुखद है लेकिन वास्तविकता यही है।

"I think it's very important for journalists to look at what is happening in the real world, and try to find ways where their skills can be used to meet real market needs. If you can have your own baseline business of clientele and services that you offer, you can still have another job. When they lay you off or fire you -- and they will, that's the way that business is -- you don't want to be stuck scrambling. You will be in a much better position to guide your own career and take the work that you want, if you can be in business for yourself." -- Amy Gahran, info-provocateur, media consultant, and former writer for Poynter's E-Media Tidbits

"My major concern with the emerging class of journalism students [is that] ... a lot of them see what's going on in the industry, not just newspapers, but broadcast and radio as well, and they don't want to be a part of it anymore. What kind of message is being sent to the next generation of journalists right now? It's really sad to see. So, you just wonder who's going to step up and be there?" -- Adam Chadwick, a filmmaker currently working on "Fit to Print," a documentary exploring the decline of the U.S. newspaper industry

"We are trying to be a lot more welcoming ... we are trying to encourage more dialogue than we did in years gone by. I think that's helping not only do the job that we are called to do, but its going be something that rescues the press." -- Michael Ray Smith, professor of communication studies, Campbell University

"I think the question becomes how much of a role do journalists have with regards to the future of journalism. In my opinion, they hold all the cards at this point ... journalism and reporting are still the same. That has not changed one bit. The tools that we use to do it, that's what is changing so rapidly." -- Bill Handy, visiting professor, Oklahoma State University

"You have too many people that are old, or my age, that are moaning ... and they are really missing the tidal wave. My students are riding the crest of that tidal wave. As a matter of fact, they don't even know it's a tidal wave ... that they are in a digital tsunami. They are just having fun in the water, and guys my age are on the beach and seeing this tsunami and running like hell." -- Benjamin A. Davis, former producer at MSNBC.com and NPR, and current instructor at Rutgers University

"A great deal is the same. The job is still is try to figure out what is significant and interesting and go report on it, and tell stories, and try to disperse that as best you can, to the public. Of course all of those steps have changed along the way. What is significant and interesting has changed, how you report is changing somewhat, and how we disperse it is changing a lot. But the basic tools are still reporting and storytelling." -- Mike Hoyt, executive editor of Columbia Journalism Review

You Can Also Make Your Job Interesting

2010-06-25T13:32:00.000+05:30

This is very famous vedio of pike's place fish market..

The amazing FISH Philosophy

Harry Paul, Co-Author of FISH! and Business Speaker

Superfreakonomics animated

2010-06-25T13:05:00.000+05:30

Yahoo! Behavioral Targeting and online newspaper

2010-06-25T12:45:00.000+05:30

US Newspapers in trouble

2010-06-25T12:35:00.000+05:30

ALAN MUTTER
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/

Make no mistake: Newspapers are still in trouble

With newspaper share prices up some 380% in the last 12 months, even the ordinarily incisive Economist Magazine last week offered an upbeat appraisal for an industry that many had written off for dead a year ago.

But it is flat wrong to believe that newspapers are on the mend in the United States. In fact, American publishers missed out on the broad advertising recovery that took place in the first three months of this year.

This should trouble anyone who works at a newspaper – and everyone who values the industry’s singular capability, when it is on its game, to enlighten our democracy.

As illustrated in the chart at left, newspaper and magazine sales in the first quarter dropped respectively 9.7% and 3.9% at the same time television expenditures advanced 10.5%, Internet rose 7.5% and radio gained 6.0%.

The ongoing contraction in newspaper advertising – coming on top of a 40% sales skid in the two years ended on Dec. 31, 2009 – adds further support to the thesis that the industry is suffering from major structural changes in the media market that will not reverse fully in even the best of economic circumstances.

The secular shift away from newspaper advertising is illustrated vividly in what happened in the early months of the year in the automotive category, where year-over-year vehicle sales grew by17.2% through May after a sluggish start in January and February.

While manufacturers and dealers on average increased their ad budgets by 18.6% in the first quarter of the year, automotive classified at newspapers fell 16.0% in the same period. The over-allmarket data is from Kantar Media, the ad-tracking company formerly known as TNS. The newspaper data is from the Newspaper Association of America.

The story was the same in two other key verticals where advertising should have advanced as the economy perked up:

:: Although the U.S. Census Bureau reported that retail sales were up 6.3% nationwide in the first three months of the year, advertising in the single most significant newspaper category was down 11.2% in the period.

:: Although the National Association of Realtors reported that contracts to sell existing homes were up 21.1% at the end of March, real estate ad revenues at papers were down 27.3% in the first quarter of the year.

The only positive growth posted by newspapers in the first period of 2010 – which also happened to be the first advance in any category in 24 months – was an increase of 4.9% in online advertising. But this pales in comparison to the over-all industry improvement of 7.5% in the same period, suggesting that newspapers are continuing to lose ground in even the vital interactive marketplace.

With advertisers for the most part stepping up their schedules in the hopes of grabbing greater share for their businesses as the economy inches toward recovery, the above trends suggest marketers may well have learned to do without newspapers during the long recession.

Seeking to save money while building visibility for their brands, many marketers experimented during the downturn with such targeted and less expensive media as cable TV, online classified sites and niche print publications. Of course, many also learned that some of the most productive online environments – such as employer-operated job sites and Craig’s List – are downright free.

Now that the economy has improved, they see no reason to rush back to newspapers, where ad prices are high and audience response ordinarily cannot be quantified as easily as it can onGoogle Analytics (which also happens to be free).

By not keeping pace with the turnaround, newspapers will continue to lose ground they can ill afford to lose. The industry’s $5.2 billion in combined sales in the first quarter of this year wereless than half the volume achieved as recently as the comparable period in 2005.

A revenue collapse of this magnitude would be sufficiently catastrophic for any industry. But it gets worse.

In addition to a formidable revenue challenge, newspapers are facing a soon-to-accelerate erosion of their reader base as their superannuated audience ages inexorably toward extinction.

Half or more of the circulation at most newspapers is composed of individuals who are aged 50 and older. This concentration means that newspapers on average have twice as many senior readers as exist in the population as a whole – and that, by logical extension, they are not engaging the younger readers that they must attract for a prosperous future.

While newspaper publishers have been able to boost the battered profitability and beleaguered share prices of their companies by cutting deeply into headcount and news hole, these short-term expedients are no substitute for forward-looking strategies to create innovative print and digital products to revitalize their audiences and attract fresh ad dollars.

No business ever cut its way to success. Newspapers won’t either.

About author

Alan D. Mutter is perhaps the only CEO in Silicon Valley who knows how to set type one letter at a time, just like his hero, Benjamin Franklin. Mutter began his career as a newspaper columnist and editor in Chicago, starting at the Chicago Daily News and later rising to City Editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. In 1984, he became the No. 2 editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. He left the newspaper business in 1988 to join InterMedia Partners, a start-up company that became one of the largest cable-TV companies in the U.S. Mutter was the COO of InterMedia when he moved to Silicon Valley in 1996 to lead the first of the three start-up companies he led as CEO. The companies he headed were a pioneering Internet service provider and two enterprise-software companies. Mutter now is a consultant specializing in corporate initiatives and new media ventures that combine his twin passions, journalism and technology. He also is on the adjunct faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California- Berkeley, where he teaches a class entitled "Journalism in an Age of Disruption."

DISCUSSION : Future of Local News About More Than Paid Content-4

2010-06-23T09:48:00.001+05:30

About 40 years ago, I was a member of the Rockford Newspaper Guild No. 5, which went on strike against the city's two daily newspapers, the Rockford (Ill.) Morning Star and the Rockford Register-Republic. Thanks to support from the ITU and the pressmen's union, we shut both papers down for 70 days. I had picketing duty for two hours each day, and one of the things I did to while away the time was to take an informal survey of what passers-by missed about their daily newspapers. The responses, in no particular order, were: the comics, the classifieds, the crosswork puzzle, the grocery ads, the sale ads, the astrology column, and so on. Exactly one person said he missed "the banner headline on the front page," and one other person said he missed "the front page news." In short, everyone said they missed their daily newspaper, but only those two respondents missed anything that the news/editorial department contributed to the mix.

Paul Baron said:

August 26, 2009 4:05 PM

I completely agree with Chris when he very accurately points out "that the mistaken notion here is that the primary product of the newspaper is journalism." At www.hometowntimes.com, we pull no punches in understanding that the community is what is important - and being responsive to the readers needs ... all needs of lifestyle, awareness, humor, events, personalities, deaths, sports, etc. ... are the vehicles through which any serious journalism or investigative reporting will find a home.

At hometowntimes.com, we’ve answered the question, “how does delivery of news make money?” by creating a proven, successful model that supports Chris's hypothesis and turns the conventional wisdom (or lack thereof) and failed business model for journalism and advertising upside down. While every news organization, reporter, and journalist is out there trying to find a revenue model from delivery of the news, Hometowntimes.com has created a business model and opportunity that aggregates millions of users nationally, providing the source of revenue to build the local community franchise, and create a successful business structure for creation and distribution of relevant localized journalism co-existing side by side in an online model that accepts the notion that advertorial content is as meaningful as hard core journalism, from the local readers' viewpoint and interest.

Steve Buttry said:

August 27, 2009 10:49 PM

Steve Buttry commenting here: Something's off-kilter here on the comments. The comments by name are not the comments I made (my comments are the ones immedieately after the onese by my name.) I presume some other people have their comments separated from their names, too.

Chris O'Brien said:

September 11, 2009 12:42 PM

Hey all: This conversation has been interesting, and moved in a couple different directions across a couple different blogs. I just wanted to let you know I've got a follow up post on all of this here:

http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2009/09/look-beyond-data-when-considering-new-models-for-news251.html

Thanks for all your thoughts and feedback!

DISCUSSION : Future of Local News About More Than Paid Content-3

2010-06-23T09:48:00.000+05:30

As background, I think there is too much defending the status quo and not enough curiosity about what will improve the market.

I am amazed that any business, including news, would approach a new delivery vehicle by offering their product for free first and then figuring out how to make money later or by banking on a 3rd party (e.g., advertisers) to fund it. The most sustainably profitable businesses sell and collect money directly from their consumers - they know when the product isn't delivering or their sales tactics don't work, and what they need to do to be more competitive.

Television and radio had no choice but the free/ad supported business model. There was no way to collect money from consumers. Now they are scrambling to re-negotiate re-transmission consent deals with cable providers to get their share of the consumer purchase pie because it has grown to be bigger than the ad revenue pie. If the guys who succeeded with the FREE/ad support model are scrambling to shift to paid, why would anyone conclude that FREE is a good model to emulate?

So you probably aren't surprised that I disagree with your conclusion that consumers never paid for the news. But I agree with your conclusion that media value comes from its power to contribute to individuals who are community builders.

Your analysis may be correct that consumer subscriptions are not enough to cover the costs to publish the news. But consumers perceive they "pay." Importantly, look at the reasons subscribers cancel paid subscriptions - isn't it because they think the writing is too biased and don't trust it any longer?

There was a time when subscriptions paid for the news and advertising was "icing on the cake." The day the news, and media in general, became dependent upon advertising to survive financially, is the day media's value to consumers began to erode. And this is also the time, maybe not coincidentally, that advertising's ROI disappeared.

I agree with you that news, and media in general, have a lot to contribute to sense of community. In fact, I think news should get back to providing the service of arming individual community builders with the ammunition to galvanize community - by providing reliably unbiased, fact-based reporting. The media who position themselves a source one can trust will be paid enough by subscribers to be more selective in their choice of advertisers. Maybe then, ad ROI may resume as well.

Steve Buttry said:

August 14, 2009 5:20 PM

Chris,

This may be the best take I've read on this issue (and I've written about it a lot myself, most recently:http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2009/07/25/newspapers-demand-gimme-another-ball/)

And Katherine is mistaken in her notion that most people who cancel their subscriptions do so because of content. It's been a while since I've checked these figures, but for all of my career at seven different newspapers, most of the time the biggest reason for cancellation is delivery problems. And the comic/crossword thing that Chris mentioned will get more cancellations than most things you could do in the newsroom or editorial page.

Chris O'Brien said:

August 14, 2009 5:42 PM

Thanks, everyone for your comments here. I wanted to address a couple of points that Katherine made:

*You wrote: "But consumers perceive they "pay." Yes, they do think they pay. But the value of the product for them extends way beyond the journalism. As many of these other elements have been stripped away, the results has been a product of less value for them.

For the past two decades, newspapers' response to declining circulation was to cut journalists, size of stories, and number of stories. The result is a product that's far inferior to what it was 25 years ago. I can't think of any industry that's solved its problems by slashing the quality of the main product it offers.

*You wrote: "Importantly, look at the reasons subscribers cancel paid subscriptions - isn't it because they think the writing is too biased and don't trust it any longer?" I've found that, in fact, such things have little impact on readership. They do prompt a lot of comments and letters to the editors, but they rarely result in someone canceling, because that person still probably wants the comics, or the sports page, or the puzzle.

I think the main driver of circulation decreases have been massive demographics shifts. More families where both spouses work outside the home. Different familial patterns in the morning. The problem here is that in print, newspapers still deliver one product, in one format, at one time. And that product simply doesn't fit into people's lives anymore. That's why circulation started falling several years before most of us had even heard of the Internet.

Also, don't discount the fact that newspapers have been cutting unprofitable circulation for many years. The San Francisco Chronicle used to deliver the paper all over Northern California. Today, that makes no economic sense (and probably never did). But just because they stopped delivering to large parts of the state doesn't mean those people didn't want the print paper. It was taken from them.

Amy Gahran said:

August 16, 2009 3:30 PM

Great post, Chris.

Another thing I've noticed, especially with local news (including free alt weeklies, which are about the only kind of print newspaper I ever bother to pick up anymore) -- readers consider ads to be content, too.

Seriously -- the ads in alt weeklies are generally informative, relevant, and entertaining. They don't suck as much as ads in metro dailies, national papers, or network TV or radio do. When people read alt weeklies, they look at the ads. They tear them out. They remember them. They're useful.

Ads don't have to suck -- and when they don't suck, they can be an important part of the content. This is true online as well as in print. That's where alt weeklies usually fall down, BTW -- their online ads typically suck.

I think it's possible to work with advertisers to craft better, more relevant advertisements online and in print/broadcast that serve the readers better and perform better. Advertisers -- especially for local news venues -- are generally part of the community, too. We've pigeonholed and even denigrated their content value for too long, I think.

- Amy Gahran

Greg Nisbet said:

August 16, 2009 4:35 PM

Dead on. Making money off any medium is all about intruding as cleverly as possible on a human interaction and finding a way to inject yourself into it. In other words, it's butting into a conversation and actually being able to change the subject.

Whether you're Google, Rupert Murdoch, or the local hardware store, there is always a way to make money from this, as long as you understand the nature of the interaction and how to make yourself a part of it.

"Content" will be monetized for the same reason it always has - people talk to each other through a variety of media, and there are smart people everywhere busy creating all kinds of interesting ways to do that, and other smart people thinking of how to butt in on those conversations and change the subject. Sometimes they're even the same people ;-)

Katherine Warman Kern said:

August 17, 2009 7:29 AM

This is a very awkward way to have such an important discussion by thoughtful, smart people. News is a catalyst for discussion. Discussion energizes the bonds that form community. What a vast opportunity gap for newspapers to capitalize on.

I think we agree on this.

Who pays? is the issue we don't seem to agree on and I think is at stake in the discussion going on Steve Buttry's blog (see above) is related.

Could we at least agree that there isn't any good existing data to tell us what consumers would pay for. There are two reasons. Most of the existing data was developed to defend the status quo. And, as most professional researchers will tell you, asking consumers to tell you what they would pay for will not yield many insights.

Couldn't we agree that media that sells directly to their consumers has a much better sense of what consumers value for than media that goes through a 3rd party or relies on advertising for support.

And couldn't we agree that whether news is a non-profit or for profit business, it needs funding.

And couldn't we agree that it is a lot easier to maintain the integrity of a news product when consumers generate enough revenue that the publisher can be highly selective about advertising and what they will do for advertisers.

Finally, and this may be the real issue behind the debate of paid vs. free, could we agree that consumers are smart enough to know that you get what you pay for?

Best,
Katherine Warman Kern
@comradity

PS I am working on a way to overcome the awkwardness of this discussion. Would you or other commentors be interested in participating?

Mark said:

August 17, 2009 5:30 PM

"How do we reinvent local community on the web? And how do we reinvent the local marketplace online?"

Both of these are worthy questions to ask, but neither of these questions implies a business model. I can easily imagine a web site that has built a great community and created a great local marketplace, but still loses money. It's called MySpace.

Joe Murphy said:

August 18, 2009 12:04 AM

Hi Chris,

I generally agree with you and your angle here. It's a lot easier for executives to play it safe with newsroom-friendly (and likely short-sighted) strategies like charging. That said, I'm going to play devil's advocate on a few points:

1. Not all newspaper businesses think charging online's going to make them money. The publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette claims charging for his online product has helped him stem the circulation declines other similarly sized newspapers have seen.

2. Sure, newspapers have charged readers to cover the cost of print circulation and distribution. But servers aren't free, and bandwidth adds up, and if you're getting 200K uniques a day that stuff has a daily price tag in the dollars, not cents. Is it okay to charge online to cover that cost?

Steve Buttry said:

August 18, 2009 10:42 AM

I have responded to this post in my own blog:
http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/newspapers-original-sin-not-failing-to-charge-but-failing-to-innovate/

Andrew Smith said:

August 20, 2009 3:37 PM

Mark is right that this post doesn’t provide a viable business strategy but, Chris, I don’t think you’ve pretended to have the answers.

What you’ve done is to suggest the questions the industry needs to be asking, and I think you’ve given us the right ones.

One problem the industry faces is that it has generally settled for trying to replicate what it does in print on the web, without asking what newspapers actually do.

In other words, it believed newspapers were all about stories and features with adverts next to them, so it created websites with stories and features, with adverts next to them, and assumed that would be enough.

I know things are already changing, and we shouldn’t be too pessimistic when papers like the Daily Telegraph are beginning to innovate. (See http://my.telegraph.co.uk/ - a British example because I know British papers best)

But I still wish newspapers would do more to look at what is working on the internet (and what is perhaps failing) – Facebook and Myspace, Yahoo! Answers, Flickr, successful forums from Something Awful to mumsnet, and even games (World of Warcraft is a rubbish game on its own, it works because it offers social interaction) – and looking at why they work and the lessons to be learned from them.

I fear that many people are still trying to learn lessons from why print newspapers worked so well 20 years ago.

Michael J said:

August 23, 2009 2:35 PM

Chris,
Great post. Perhaps this is one of those times that a meme that has been ascendant will finally start to disappear.

People have never bought newspapers primarily for the news. Advertising came into newspapers when steam driven presses coincided with the growth of the mass market. "Yellow" journalism took advantage of the moraility play to gather eyeballs to sell to department stores to sell mass produced stuff.

This whole thing is only about 100 years old. Before that newspapers were many things, but I think Chris has it right when he says they build communities and enable commerce.

Unfortunately this is very far away from the celebrity journalism that started in the early 70's when the career path became Pulitizer then TV pundit.

It's most likely that the emerging solutions will be some version of back to the future.

DISCUSSION : Future of Local News About More Than Paid Content-2

2010-06-23T09:45:00.000+05:30

Gordon Woolf said:

August 13, 2009 8:50 PM

I've never seen this put so well. Several years ago, after being group editor of several newspaperes based on Geraldton in Western Australia my wife and I bought a convenience store. Soon after we started (in Wodonga, Victoria, Australia) Sunday newspapers were published for the first time for general distribution. Three new papers on the same day -- and the main comment from buyers? They'd missed out the lotto results!

But a problem with the web is that so many supposedly local community sites are not for or by the community. They are mostly commercial ad-selling sites with some bits of local info which is often outdated or just wrong. It's cheap to start real local web sites. I've just started one at hastings3915.info for a capital outlay of less than $100.

Even the web sites by many of the supposedly local newspapers have no real connection with the community. One local one has a local domain name, but it goes through to a site for a bigger region and much of the content is shared with the statewide site.

News is but a small part of catering for a community, and too many local papers have forgotten that is their role. Journalists on really local papers know because they know their readers; they can't disappear back to the city.

I suspect that as ads get harder to sell the result just might be some better newspapers.

DISCUSSION : Future of Local News About More Than Paid Content-1

2010-06-23T09:41:00.000+05:30

Tom Prete said:

August 13, 2009 6:15 PM

It's important to be clear about two facts in this discussion:

1. Free newspapers are not all "shoppers." Some newspapers that happen to be free contain some very fine journalism. I've worked at several free papers (most now defunct for reasons only partly related to business), and most journalism outlets in any medium would be very lucky to have newsrooms filled with the kind of smart, tough, prolific journalists I knew there.

2. Newspapers are primarily businesses, and they always have been. When I moved from free weeklies to a paid daily, I was astonished at how many reporters and editors ignored this reality. The sooner people on the news side accept this, the sooner we all will be able to view the future of the industry clearly and factually -- instead of through the idealistically distorted lens of a self-perpetuated fiction about what a newspaper is.

understanding the content...what reader needs

2010-06-23T09:39:00.000+05:30

Very good article and good discussion on it. I am posting it here for our journalists...

Future of Local News About More Than Paid Content

by Chris O’Brien

During an otherwise mundane story about Microsoft's recent decision to offer a free, web-based version of its Office suite of products, I was struck by this sentence in an Associated Press story:

With Office 2010, Microsoft must decide how much software it can give away online without undermining its lucrative desktop software business. If it doesn't make the right calculation, the software maker could find itself in the same position as newspapers that gave online content away and now are struggling to replace print revenue.

That second line is almost a throwaway, written with no attribution. That means that the notion has officially entered into conventional wisdom: Local newspapers screwed up by giving away for free the content everyone used to pay to consume.

Conventional wisdom, yes. And untrue.

Correcting this fundamental error is about more than just debating the past. Because this mistaken assumption is driving the debate about new business models for news.

I want to explain why I think this mistaken assumption is causing people to ask the wrong question about the future of local news. And what I think the right questions are. I want to try to reframe the discussion about business models to focus on where true opportunity and solutions might be found for journalism entrepreneurs to pursue.

First, let me address the first half of the assumption about "newspapers that gave away content." This assumes that people once paid for journalism.

THE MYTH OF PAYING FOR JOURNALISM

Let's correct that right now: When it comes to local newspapers, people never paid for journalism.

Believing that they did represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what a local newspaper was, or is. Especially when it comes to the business of a local newspaper. And it's a tragic misreading that I hear repeated on all sides of the paid content debate, whether they're for or against charging for news online. (The equation is a bit different for national newspapers like the New York Times or USA Today. But I'll leave that for another time.)

Let's review the actual business of a local newspaper, at least as it used to be. Back in February, when I was attending a Knight Digital Media Center workshop at the University of California at Berkeley, we heard a presentation from Lauren Rich Fine, a former newspaper analyst for Merrill Lynch and a presenter at Kent State University.

Fine broke down the historic revenues of newspapers. Across the industry, the money people paid to subscribe accounted for, on average, about 20 percent of a newspaper's revenue. Classifieds, on the other hand, typically brought in 50 percent of the revenue, and 70 percent of profits on average, according to Fine.

So let's reflect on that: The consumer was only paying about one-fifth the cost of the product. But what were they getting for that money?

Again, the mistaken notion here is that the primary product of the newspaper is journalism. That's the conceit of journalists, but it's also the general misinterpretation by those seeking to re-invent news from the outside.

THE CONSUMER VIEW

Let's look at a newspaper not from the newsroom-centric view, which assumes the whole value is the journalism. Let's look at the newspaper from the eyes of the consumer.

From that view, a newspaper is a product that, at least at its peak, provided about 50 different services for people. It helped people figure out where to shop. It delivered a boatload of coupons every Sunday. It helped them plan their weekend. It entertained them with comics and puzzles. It let them know what was on the school lunch menu. And along the way, it also delivered journalism.

Anyone who has worked at a newspaper long enough will tell you that what provokes more outrage from readers than anything else is messing with the comics or puzzles.

Just this week, I was eating lunch with a chief executive who had been in Silicon Valley for 30 years. Toward the end of our lunch, he said he had read the print version of my newspaper for 30 years, and still does. But he was frustrated that we now run the puzzles on a different page every day. He's not alone. About two years ago, when my newspaper all but eliminated the features section, the outpouring of emails from readers were primarily expressing outrage that the puzzles and comics were being moved.

You can shake your head, but that's as important a part of the newspaper for many people as the journalism is. For their monthly bill, which only represented 20 percent of revenue, consumers were getting a product that did many things, only one of which was the journalism. Did journalism have a higher social value? Certainly. But it wasn't the core of the business. For the reader, an ad telling them about a sale or a new store might be just as important in their lives.

LOSING THE COMMUNITY MARKETPLACE

So if journalism isn't the business of a newspaper, what is?

Pull back the lens. At their peak, local newspapers did two things: They created community. And they provided the local marketplace for goods and services. These services were so profitable, that they subsidized the civic good of journalism.

The reason newspapers are in trouble today is because they have lost their dominant position on both of these fronts. Classifieds have evaporated, blowing a massive hole in newspaper revenue.

People know this, yet they somehow forget that this was a completely non-journalistic function.

When it came to community, the sum of news and information in a newspaper created a shared base of knowledge, set the conversations about civic life, and provided a bond that created a sense of place. Today, as newspapers have shrunk, and as the audience has splintered, the newspaper no longer serves as community hub.

Having lost all of these things, all that is left is the journalism. And on its own, we're discovering this is not something people will pay for.

GETTING BEYOND PAID CONTENT

So the solution that's carrying the day is to start charging for content. I don't favor this approach, but I think it's too late to stop the train. If paid content succeeds, local newspapers wouldn't be getting people to pay for journalism again. They'd be getting them to pay for the first time.

Once the paid content strategy comes and goes, it'll be time to look for other solutions. I don't believe, as some have written, that we've tried everything and should simply give up. In my view, there is still enormous opportunity to create business models that support local newsrooms if journalism entrepreneurs ask the right questions:

Let's stop asking how to get people to pay for content, because they never did.

Let's stop asking: How do we reinvent journalism? Opportunity abounds here. The new digital tools are allowing us to create deeper, richer journalism than ever. And more people than ever are reading my journalism. Journalism is doing fine.

Instead, newsrooms need to ask:

> How do we reinvent local community on the web?

> And how do we reinvent the local marketplace online?

By no means are these puzzles solved. I don't believe that Craigslist represents the last, best way people in a community will buy and sell things. Yelp, while growing in traffic, continues to have reputation issues with local merchants.

The discussion over paid content and tweaking the advertising model is too limited. Solve those two bigger challenges of community and the local marketplace, and you'll create a business that will support smart, multi-platform newsrooms. These newsrooms won't be dominant, as they were in the past. They'll exist as part of local news ecosystem.

But create community, help people succeed in business, and you'll find a way back to re-igniting the passion for a local news organization.

What Journalism Can Learn From Adult Entertainment

2010-06-23T07:05:00.000+05:30

One more interesting article, i found on net....written by Andy Medici on poynter

Let's role-play for a second.

Imagine you are working in an industry that has been battered by the recent recession and rapid advances in technology. Instead of paying for teams of professionals, people are going online to find new content like yours or create their own. The Internet has opened the door to thousands of competitors, all offering content that appeals to just about any niche or taste.

Meanwhile, your legacy company is burdened with an outdated distribution system and is trying desperately to adjust to a new world in which having a local monopoly is not an option.

Sound familiar? Well if you have been working in the adult entertainment industry for the last few years, then this isn't really news.

In normal times, journalism and the adult entertainment industry would make strange bedfellows. After all, the first is tasked with upholding our democracy and the second is ... well, sometimes literally about strange bedfellows.

The two industries share many of the same problems, and a lot of the handwringing can easily be copy and pasted from one to the other. At XBIZ LA, an event offering seminars on the future of the adult entertainment industry, it's easy to see the anxiety.

Jeff Mullen, founder of adult studio X-Play and an adult-industry marketing expert, echoed a journalism industry refrain.

"We have one product to sell, yet we collectively give it away," Mullen said.

In a MarketResearch.com study titled "The Future of Online Adult Entertainment: Surging Demand, the Rise of Free Porn and the Emergence of New Business Models," the company laid out some of the key challenges threatening the industry.

Here are some key tidbits.

"Consumer consumption of adult content has shifted from physical media to the web, while online usage is changing rapidly as technological advancements allow the deployment of more advanced and interactive multimedia services."
The wide range of content available for free will continue to have a negative impact on premium providers' ability to attract and retain fee-paying clients.

This all sounds so familiar. I think some people in the news media have debated this whole concept of "free content" versus "paid content."
Here, here, here, and the list goes on and on and on.

In a press release in January of 2009, Hustler founder Larry Flynt said that DVD sales and rentals had fallen more than 22 percent, as people have turned more to the Internet for content.

What contributes to the plummeting revenue? Part of the blame falls on the meteoric rise of free content. And just like the journalism industry, that content is coming in niche form, custom-made for the user.

Stephen Yagielowicz is both a writer for Adult Entertainment News Site XBIZ.com and a homegrown purveyor of adult content since 1993. He sees the growing amount of free content as a generational issue -- younger people just aren't willing to pay for what they can get for free.

He said there are still opportunities to sell content, either through mobile phones or by selling videos for a much lower price (think iTunes and its .99 cent price point). But he still thinks that paid and free can exist side by side as long as adult Web outlets begin to focus on marketing their content, building a loyalty base and offering new products in a variety of formats.

"The bottled water guys sell you water all day long even though you have a tap in the house," Yagielowicz said. "They find a way."

One adult entertainment company used the market downturn as a chance to reorient its business. Pink Visual saw traditional DVD sales plummet in 2004 by about 50 percent. That forced the company to revisit how it attracted customers, and it helped focus the company's attention on the Internet and mobile market.

Now more than 40 percent of Pink Visual's 800,000 daily unique visitors are coming in on mobile platforms, and Quentin Boyer, the director of public relations for the company, said that they try to adopt new technology as early as possible. He said they are "practically camped out on technology blogs" looking for the next mobile platform or tablet coming out on the market.

Pink Visual was one of the first adult entertainment companies on the iPad, taking advantage of its large screen to show its wares.

Boyer said that as readers become used to incredible amounts of content, they are less willing to pay for the content itself. He said that users are more willing to pay for formats that work better on their mobile phones or tablets.

"People are not so much paying for content as they are paying for convenience and ease of use," Boyer said.

He said that Pink Visual has rebounded over the last few years, and is now almost at its pre-2004 levels. He is not sure where Pink Visual will be next, but he has no doubt that as mobile technology evolves, the company's unique brand of content will evolve with it. The journalism industry should take a lesson from this playbook, and be a part of cutting edge technology, not racing to catch up.

भविष्य - क्या सोचते हैं अमेरिका के न्यूजरूम लीडर्स

2010-06-23T06:06:00.000+05:30

NEWS EXECUTIVES, SKEPTICAL OF GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES,
SEE OPPORTUNITY IN TECHNOLOGY BUT ARE UNSURE
ABOUT REVENUE AND THE FUTURE

America’s news executives are hesitant about many of the alternative funding ideas being discussed for journalism today and are overwhelmingly skeptical about the prospect of government financing, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism in association with the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) and the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA).

Among the findings:

Many of the new revenue options being debated today receive only limited or divided support from news executives. When it comes to the often-discussed option of pay walls for online content, for instance, only 10% say they are working on them, though that could change. Another 32% are considering them and just 11% have written off the idea. More than a third (35%) have not even considered them at all. Still, as they look ahead, only 15% of news executives believe pay walls will be a significant source of revenue in three years.

There is significant resistance, however, to other discussed revenue streams, particularly from the government or from groups that engage in advocacy. Fully 75% of news executives have serious reservations about receiving government subsidies, and 78% have significant resistance to financing from interest groups. Roughly half have significant worries about funds from government tax credits and more than a third have significant doubts about private donations.

Most of the effort online is focused instead on more conventional revenue sources. Display and banner online advertising, for all that it has failed to grow, is still the No. 1 area of effort and the one that news executives pin their greatest hopes on. But second is revenue from products outside of news.

Broadcast news executives are noticeably more pessimistic about journalism’s future than editors at newspaper-based operations. Broadcasters think their profession is headed in the wrong direction by a margin of nearly two-to-one (64% versus 35%). By contrast, editors working at newspapers were split (49% wrong direction versus 51% right direction). A year ago, journalists who were members of the Online News Association surveyed by PEJ fell in between these two, 54% wrong direction, 45% right.

And most news executives think the Internet is changing the fundamental values of journalism. Six out of ten feel this way—though executives from broadcast operations (62%) do so more than executives from newspapers (53%). And their biggest concern is loosening standards of accuracy and verification, much of it tied to the immediacy of the Web.

Mobile applications are becoming increasingly important. Three-quarters say mobile applications are essential or very important while just 35% say that of YouTube postings or other video websites.

Overall, most news executives are worried about journalism’s future. Nearly six in ten, 58%, believe the profession is headed in the “wrong direction,” while 41% see things moving in the “right” one. But there is a noticeable split here between newspaper executives and broadcast news executives. Members of ASNE, a newspaper-related organization, are narrowly more optimistic than pessimistic about journalism’s direction; 51% see things getting better vs. 49% who see them getting worse.

WHAT NEWS ORGANIZATIONS COULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY

पोल खोलता आकार पटेल का लेख

2010-06-23T03:33:00.000+05:30

मिंट में पिछले दिनों आकार पटेल ने अपने कालम में भारतीय पत्रकारों की पोल खोली है। बहुत ही रोचक आलेख है, लेकिन आम हिंदी पत्रकार तो मिंट तो बहुत दूर की बात सामान्य अंग्रेजी अखबार भी नहीं पढ़ते हैं। इसीलिए मैं इस कालम को यहां पोस्ट कर रहा हूं कि शायद कुछ पत्रकार इसे पढ़ने की जहमत उठा लें....

Why our media can’t explain India

Manmohan Singh is rarely interviewed by Indian media. But he is actually a talented interviewee and foreign journalists love him

Aakar Patel

http://www.livemint.com/articles/2010/06/17200624/Why-our-media-can8217t-expl.html

Manmohan Singh is rarely interviewed by Indian media. RSS journal Organiser scolded him for this in an editorial recently. But Singh is actually a talented interviewee and foreign journalists love him. It is almost embarrassing to read his interviews with Europeans because they are so fawning with him.

Tell-all: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s press conference last month was one of his rare interactions with Indian media. T Narayan/Hindustan Times

And yet the press conference he held in Delhi last month was his first in four years. Why does Singh not speak to Indian journalists? Let us look at his press conference. Here’s the first question:

“Sir, mera naam Umakant Lakhera hai. Main Hindustan*, jo Hindi akhbar hai, uska Dilli mein chief of bureau hoon. Pradhan mantriji, mera aap se yah sawal hai ki aap se pehle Bharat mein jitne bhi pradhan mantri hue hain, economy ke baare mein vey log bahut zyada nahin jaante the. Yah desh ki khushkismati hai ki aap economisthain aur aap ne azadi ke baad ka, Bharat kieconomy ke utar-chadhav ka, bahut lamba samay dekha hai. Mera aap se yah sawal hai ki aaj price rise par control kyon nahin hai? Aisa kyon hota hai ki inflation kam hota hai aur mehngai badhti hai? Pehle ke zamaney mein mantri jab bayan dete they, to agley din mehngai ghat jati thi, aaj aisa kyon hota hai ki aap ke jo ministers hain, aapke mantri jo bayan dete hain, uske agle din mehngai badh jaati hai? Aisa kyon hota hai ke economy sarkar ke control mein nahin hai aur aam aadmi ka zinda rehna mushkil ho gaya hai? Common man ko lagta hai ke sarkar ke niyantran mein cheezein nahin hai. Economy ka jo slowdown hai aur jo mehngai hai, aap us par apne vichar prakat karein.”

Also ReadAakar Patel’s earlier Lounge columns

The press conference continues in this manner. There’s little reason for Singh to engage Indian media, especially Hindi media, because it is all like this. The opening question asked by Washington Post’s owner Lally Weymouth, who interviewed Singh last year, was: “You are (US) President Obama’s first official state visitor. What would you like to accomplish in Washington?”

We find this sort of objective questioning difficult to do, as our television channels testify every night. This is because Indian journalists look not for information, but for agreement with the convictions they hold. European journalists do not make pleas on behalf of the common man (who in India is represented by the Hindi journalist rather than the prime minister).

There are good journalists in India, but they tend to be business journalists. Let us quickly understand why. Unlike regular journalism, business journalism is removed from emotion because it reports numbers. There is little subjectivity and business channel anchors are calm and rarely agitated because their world is more transparent.

Competent business reporting here, like CNBC, can be as good as business reporting in the West. This isn’t true of regular journalism in India, which is uniformly second rate.

V.S. Naipaul spotted this in our headlines. Citing ones such as “Masses must be educated to make democracy a success” he concluded, rightly, that India was “a nation ceaselessly exchanging banalities with itself”.

India is the only major newspaper market in the world where newspapers are open to selling their stories. The problem isn’t that Indian proprietors are evil or that they’re looking for short-term benefit while eroding the paper over time. In my experience of six newspapers, the proprietor has always been more knowledgeable than the editor.

The problem is the reader. It is unthinkable that its readers would continue to patronizeThe New York Times if it were revealed that the newspaper’s reporting was available for sale. But in India it’s fine, and the space is available for the proprietor to profit.

About 10 years ago, Indian editors came under pressure to take their newspapers “upmarket”. In Europe, going upmarket means adding pages that carry reports on opera and literature, but that’s not what the word means here.

In India, upmarket means carrying photographs of well-dressed, wealthy people: What is referred to as Page 3. Coverage of celebrities is actually downmarket, but in India it’s inverted. There’s no demand from readers for real upmarket content in India, and even if there was, there are few journalists qualified to provide it.

This is because you cannot make a living as a writer in India, which is surprising because we have 100 million speakers of English and think of ourselves as being a giant market. But this isn’t true and there is little consumption of writing. The reason Indian writers are paid little is that it does not really matter what you write here. One writer is as good or bad as another, and the good writer is actually the familiar face (which explains why the same people—Pritish Nandy, Shobhaa De—write everywhere). There is also the problem of quality, it must be admitted, and you can count the number of Indians asked to write for publications abroad on the fingers of one hand.

A century ago, 5% of India was literate. Formal schooling came to India only after Macaulay’s Minute, which we are taught to hate. Indians were educated in English in numbers quite recently, after we could produce no alternative to Macaulay’s vision. In the 1970s, this urban literacy in English produced publications that were new and different. India Today and Sunday sent reporters to write about India’s villages. What they came back with surprised readers, who hadn’t known what a truly frightening place India was.

Bihar’s police blinded a dozen undertrials with cycle spokes and acid in Bhagalpur (the story of this casual act of punishment took weeks to emerge). Government engineers on deputation regularly abused tribal women, and there was no end to stories about the barbarism in the Indian village (there still is no end).

But there was always something missing from this journalism, and it is this: You could read Indian newspapers every day for 30 years and still not know why India is this way. The job of newspapers is, or is supposed to be, to tell its readers five things: who, when, where, what and why. Most newspapers make do with only three of these and are unlikely to really tell you “what”. This is because urban Indians are tired now of reading the horror stories that come out of our villages. Only a couple of newspapers, such as TheIndian Express, persist in reporting news that isn’t pleasant, and they haven’t much circulation.

No newspaper at all can tell you “why”, because they do not know themselves. The same stories from 30, 50, 100 or 500 years ago keep repeating here, and the peasant will still murder his daughter for falling in love. The happenings in the city are also difficult to understand. The news from May was that Delhi University sold radioactive Cobalt-60 as scrap. This killed the merchant who bought it and crippled another. The university, which is supposed to be a research body, had unthinkingly buried some of the other Cobalt-60 earlier and this will poison the ground. Why are we so casual? Nobody can say, and there will be an explanation along the lines that it was an accident. But this will happen again, of course. Union Carbide’s plant in Bhopal was owned by Americans. But it was managed, staffed and run by Indians. Its foreman was Indian and its workers were Indian. Why were they so casual about their own safety? The media doesn’t know, but it is convinced the solution lies with getting Warren Anderson.

Aakar Patel is a director with Hill Road Media.

2010-06-19T18:18:00.000+05:30

www.fortunewatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/ATT00001.jpg

"All cartoons copyright their respective owners."

ये संपादक इस युग में भी कलम लेकर कापी एडिट करते हैं

2010-06-19T12:57:00.000+05:30

क्या टाइम्स आफ इंडिया, हिंदुस्तान टाइम्स, हिंदू, टेलीग्राफ, डेक्कन, भास्कर, हिंदुस्तान, अमर उजाला, पत्रिका, जागरण, प्रभात खबर आदि अखबारों के कार्यकारी या स्थानीय संपादक कंप्यूटर-इंटरनेट के युग में खबर की हार्ड कापी लेकर कलम से उसे एडिट करते होंगे? मैं सबके बारे में दावे के साथ तो नहीं कह सकता, फिर भी सालों से यह परंपरा बंद ही नजर आ रही है। आप सोच रहे होंगे कि यकायक मुझे यह बात कहां से याद आ गई जो इसका जिक्र कर रहा हूं। दरअसल मैं प्वाइंटर के पुराने न्यूजलेटर देख रहा था और वहां अप्रैल के महीने का एक आलेख मुझे मिला जिसमें अमेरिका के उन संपादकों की बात बताई गई थी, जो आज भी हाथ में कलम लेकर कागज पर रिपोर्टर की कापी एडिट करते हैं। यहां वाशिंगटन पोस्ट के नियमित लेखक हैंक स्टूवर के ब्लाग का जिक्र हैं। मैं उस ब्लाग पर गया और प्रेसीडेंट ओबामा की स्पीच की कलम से एडिटेड कापी देखी। मैं इसे भी यहां पोस्ट कर रहा हूं-

और तलाश शुरू की तो पाया कि अमेरिका में एक नहीं कई संपादक आज भी कलम से कापी एडिट करते हैं।

वायस आफ सैनडियागो के संपादक एंड्रू डोनाह्यू कहते हैं कि I still edit by hand w/ a red pen and a clipboard। एंड्रू कलम से एडिटिंग को ट्रेनिंग और कोचिंग का अच्छा टूल मानते हैं। उनका मानना है कि इससे रिपोर्टर्स को अच्छी कापी लिखने में मदद मिलती है।

आग्रह

आपके संपादक यदि ऐसे हों तो उनके बारे में यहां शेयर करें।
यदि आप खुद संपादक हैं और रिपोर्टर्स की कोचिंग के लिए कोई खास तरीका इस्तेमाल करते हैं तो यहां शेयर करें।
यदि आप रिपोर्टर हैं और अपने संपादक के तरीके आपको अपनी स्किल्स विकसित करने में मदद मिली है तो विस्तार से सबको बताएं।

FTC is trying to protect journalism’s past

2010-06-18T14:22:00.000+05:30

पत्रकारिता की मदद करेगी अमेरिकी सरकार-3

अमेरिकी फेडरल ट्रेड कमीशन की पत्रकारिता के पुर्नाविष्कार के प्रोजेक्ट पर अमेरिका में लगातार बहस चल रही है। हमारे पत्रकार भी इस बहस को समझें, इसलिए हम लगातार वहां उठ रही बातों को इस ब्लाग पर देने की कोशिश कर रहे हैं। इसके तहत पढ़िए tampabay.com पर प्रकाशित एरिक डेगांस के आलेख को....

A bailout for news?

By Eric Deggans, Times TV/Media Critic

For most old-school journalists, the equation is simple.
Public disdain for reporters - ranked slightly above used car salesmen in one public poll - combined with a need to stay independent from the government as watchdogs, equals a situation where we can't take money from the government to survive.
But there are some other numbers to consider: 5,900 full-time newspaper journalism jobs disappeared last year, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, with one-third of newspaper newsroom jobs gone since 2001. Newspaper advertising revenue dropped 22 percent in 2009, according to the PEJ.
The historic way of funding great journalism in America - bankrolling newsrooms through the sales of real estate, auto, retail and employment ads - is disintegrating. Which means journalists must once again confront an uncomfortable issue: Do the news media need a bailout from the government to save journalism?
"If these institutions go away, will it be impossible to build back some alternative?" asked Tom Rosenstiel, director of the PEJ, which is part of the Pew Research Center. "If something precious is irretrievably lost, you may have to move in sooner."
On Tuesday, I'll explore this issue in Washington, D.C., at the national convention of the American Society of News Editors - moderating a panel featuring a journalist, newspaper publisher, government officials and lawyer in a discussion titled: "Can government save us? And do we even want to try?"
John Nichols, Washington correspondent for the liberal magazine Nation and co-author of a book advocating government subsidies called The Death and Life of American Journalism, thinks so. Noting a media universe increasingly crowded with information but decreasing in journalism, Nichols fears a future where reporting on local and state government vanishes.
He and co-author Robert McChesney have suggested a few government-funded antidotes: boosting subsidies to public broadcasting outlets such as National Public Radio and PBS; a tax credit for the first $200 citizens spend on a daily newspaper; or tax incentives for owners of debt-laden media chains who sell their newspapers to local owners.
"The Founding Fathers strongly supported postal subsidies and printing subsidies," Nichols said. "If Rush Limbaugh wants to say this is a typical liberal running to government … I'm like those liberals who founded the American system and thought the government was so powerful it had to have journalism to keep it in check."
A study released in January by the University of Southern California found that in 1970, the U.S. Postal Service covered 75 percent of the mailing costs for news periodicals, totaling $2 billion. In 2006, that subsidy fell to 11 percent, or $288 million. Federal and state tax breaks for newspapers and magazines total more than $900 million.
"If the government has supported the news industry for all of American history, shouldn't it consider new forms of support now, when the survival of news businesses is in doubt?" wrote the study's co-author David Westphal, a former McClatchy Newspapers editor and senior fellow at the school's Center on Communications Leadership and Policy.
But Paul Tash, editor, chairman and CEO of the St. Petersburg Times, opposes direct subsidy of newspapers while noting that government might help indirectly - by allowing the public to make tax-deductible donations to newspapers, for instance.
He criticized the industry for being too fatalistic - incorrectly connecting the problems of big newspaper chains struggling to pay off massive debts in the worst economy since the Great Depression to the death of local journalism.
"This can still be a very vibrant business," he said. "We're here to make government's life miserable. ... To be subsidized by government seems to only invite compromise."
Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin echoed that view back in 2008, writing: "A press beholden to the ruling class - a press that cannot stand on its own two feet and the strength of its product - is a press better off dead."
The nation's current political polarization makes substantial or direct aid for journalism seem a long shot. But given how long it may take to see if media rebounds after the general recessions ends - one expert said up to 18 months - it may be time to start drastic discussions now.
"I'm maybe a minority opinion, but I don't think getting government into (supporting) the content creation business is a disaster," said Rick Edmonds, a media analyst for the Poynter Institute, which owns the St. Petersburg Times. "But the details are important."
Eric Deggans can be reached at (727) 893-8521 or deggans@sptimes.com. See The Feed blog at blogs.tampabay.com/media.

News Corp. Buys Skiff, Stake in Journalism Online

2010-06-18T11:36:00.000+05:30

Acquisitions Fuel Its Campaign for Paid Digital Content

In a pair of deals intended to fuel its campaign to expand paid digital content, News Corp. has bought the Skiff e-reading platform developed by Hearst and a stake in Journalism Online, a company founded to help publishers charge for content on the web.
News Corp. did not, however, acquire the Skiff Reader, a planned e-reader device. It's not clear whether Hearst will still bring the device to market, seek a separate buyer for it or let the planned device die.
Terms of the deals were not disclosed and are not likely to prove material enough to show up in News Corp. financial reports.
News Corp. and CEO Rupert Murdoch have been arguing for some time now that newspapers need to start charging for their content on the web, but the new acquisitions put the company in position to sell them the services to do so. News Corp. has also suggested that it might offer a consumer pass that provides access to multiple gated websites, which again would benefit from the acquisitions. "Soon we'll deliver an innovative subscription model that will deliver content to consumers whenever, wherever they want it," News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch said during a quarterly earnings call last month.

News Corp. already had pay technology in its arsenal, of course, starting with the longstanding pay wall at The Wall Street Journal Online and followed by the pay walls at the London Times and Sunday Times. But Journalism Online's outreach to many publishers during the past year may help News Corp. round up partners for its plan more quickly.

And the Skiff e-reading platform gives News Corp. new capabilities and potential services to offer publishers and consumers as e-readers continue to grow. Magazine and newspaper publishers are excited about the potential to sell their content on e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle and tablet computers such as Apple's iPad.
News Corp. also said Monday that it had named Jon Housman to the newly created post of president for its digital journalism initiatives; Mr. Housman had been serving as a strategic advisor to News Corp. for the past several years.

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Harvard University Nieman reports (Summer 2010 Issue) -3

2010-06-18T11:12:00.000+05:30

CONTINUED....

Feeling the Heat: The Brain Holds Clues for Journalism

Where Journalism Fits

This rise in emotional intensity poses a real problem for serious journalists, as I describe in my book “What Is Happening to News: The Information Explosion and the Crisis in Journalism.” We have been trained for many good reasons to shy away from it in the presentation of news. But we see our audience drawn to it. And we do not even have a way of discussing which uses of emotion are misleading or manipulative and which actually can help people understand their world.

The sciences of the mind offer a lot of help if we are willing to learn from them. They explain, for example, why the immediate crowds out the important. Why bad news attracts attention more than good news does. They can show us how emotion interacts with the human brain’s inherent mental shortcuts to lead us systematically to erroneous conclusions. They can point us to the ways in which search algorithms interact with emotions and these mental shortcuts to mislead people about the relative importance of various pieces of information. They can even help us understand the way our ability and impulse to read other people’s minds draws us to a story and light up other secrets of how and why narrative works.

It should be clear by now that the challenge for journalists from here forward is not only the steadfast adherence to the values of accuracy and independence and the social responsibility to provide a civic education but also the development of new ways of thinking and talking about how to advance the social mission of journalism in a radically and rapidly evolving environment. The answer is not to figure out how to transport 20th century news presentation into 21st century delivery mechanisms but rather to create a new rhetoric of news that can get through to the changed and changing news audience.

To conclude where I began, the audience will determine the future of news. Serious journalists must understand to the very essence the minds that make up this audience in order to know how to persuade people to assimilate the significant and demand the accurate. Anything less is the neglect of our most important social responsibility.
THE END

RAMU's NEWS SQR

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DISCUSSION : Future of Local News About More Than Paid Content-2

DISCUSSION : Future of Local News About More Than Paid Content-1

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Harvard University Nieman reports (Summer 2010 Issue) -3

CONTINUED....

Feeling the Heat: The Brain Holds Clues for Journalism

NEWS EXECUTIVES, SKEPTICAL OF GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES,
SEE OPPORTUNITY IN TECHNOLOGY BUT ARE UNSURE
ABOUT REVENUE AND THE FUTURE