Amar Ujala ranked top in
UP, Dehradun and Haldwani
According to a latest survey report by Audit Bureau
of Circulations (ABC), conducted from July to
December 2015, Hindi daily Amar Ujala recorded a
circulation of 29.35 lakh copies in Uttar Pradesh, Dehradun
and Haldwani, which is a growth of 29 percent from
the same time last year. In order to attract new readers,
the newspaper had recently redesigned into a broadsheet format with a revised cover price. The
newspaper’s new makeover has created an economy model, designed with a fresh look, yet at a
cheaper cover price. Through its new avatar, Amar Ujala has not only garnered more readerships
but also achieved better advertising revenue.
nnn
Change in management at KBA
Asia-Pacific subsidiary
With effect from October 01, 2016,
Stefan Segger will take over the role
of sales director at KBA (Koenig &
Bauer) Digital & Web Solutions at Würzburg. He
is currently the general manager of KBA Asia-
Pacific subsidiary in Singapore. Stefan Segger,
an experienced and valued expert esteemed by
customers and colleagues alike, takes over as head
of the sales team for newspaper, commercial and
digital presses at KBA’s headquarters in Würzburg,
according to a source from the company. The
focus of his new role will be to establish KBA
digital presses (RotaJET series) more firmly on
the market and expand good business ties with
commercial and newspaper companies in the field
of web offset printing. Stefan Segger began his
career in 1984 working at Albert-Frankenthal.
Twelve years ago he
was appointed general
manager of KBA Asia-
Pacific subsidiary in
Singapore.
Meanwhile, Andreas
Friedrich has been
appointed to lead the KBA Singapore subsidiary.
With the departure of Stefan from Singapore,
Andreas will take over his role at the KBA Asia-
Pacific subsidiary. He has been active in web
press sales since 2001 and worked successfully at
KBA China in Shanghai since 2005. As general
manager for the sales and service of KBA web
presses in China, North and East Asia, Andrea
has many years of experienc
nnn
MINT changes editorial structure
A big change has been done in the editorial
structure of MINT with the appointments
of Anil Padmanabhan as executive editor
and Sundeep Khanna as national corporate editor.
Having been with the newspaper since its inception
around a decade ago, Anil has managed many
of the economic daily’s projects and now he
is tasked with the responsibility to oversee
all news operations across the platform under
his newly designated position. Sundeep, on
the other hand, will spearhead the coverage
on big corporate activities across the country.
Others being reshuffled in the editorial league
include Jose Tharakan. He was responsible
for integrated
desk, but has now
been designated as
assistant managing editor to take charge of
digital related properties. In recognition of
her great work in Mumbai, Ira Dugal has
been promoted to deputy managing editor;
and Anil Penna to the same designation to
handle Mint Asia. Naresh Mathur, who handled
Page 1, has been promoted as the head of the
integrated copy desk. Ashish Kumar Mishra
has become deputy editor to tap writers across
bureaus; and Monika Halan has been designated
as consulting editor.
nnn
HT Media appoints Bobby Ghosh as
new editor-in-chief
Following a year-long search, HT Media
finally announced early May the appointment
of Bobby Ghosh as the editor-in-chief of HT
Digital Streams Ltd. In an email to employees,
HT Media CEO Rajiv Verma announced the
new appointment, while also the departure of
Sanjoy Narayan, now former editor-in-chief of
Hindustan Times. Ghosh is not a replacement
for Narayan though. HT Digital Stream is a
100 percent subsidiary of HT Media, created
to focus on content creation.
Ghosh has worked at some of
the prestigious global media
organisations in the US. He
resigned as editor-at-large from
news website Quartz, where he
joined as managing editor. He
was also at Time magazine as its world editor.
And the outgoing editor Sanjoy Narayan joined
Hindustan Times in 2008. Prior to it, he worked
at Business Today, Business World, The Economic
Times and The Telegraph.
nnn
Monotech opens gateway to
short-run
newspaper printing
Adoption of digital printing capabilities
means pursuing an additional source of
revenue. Understanding this requirement,
Monotech Systems introduces JETSCI Web
Press WP600, an inkjet system, designed for
short-run to on-demand jobs in the newspaper
and book printing industries. The press is
designed to produce outputs in offset quality,
reducing inventory costs to drastically low level,
at quick setup and
fast turnaround
time. Monotech
System sisa
pioneer in digital
printing solutions, which presents the latest
digital inkjet printing presses suitable for
short-run productions, transactional printing,
direct mailing, security and many more.
nnn
Times Internet partners Chartbeat
to drive newsroom
analytics
Times Internet, India’s largest digital network
and part of The Times of India Group,
and Chartbeat, the leading data toolset for
influential newsrooms, have recently announced
their partnership. Chartbeat claims its tools drive
80 percent of the top media sites in the US and
more than 50,000 media sites in over 60 countries
around the world. According to Chartbeat, Times
Internet chose the New York-based company to
power its internal analytics, providing editorial
and research teams with real-time and historical
data to establish, shape and grow its readership.
Using Chartbeat’s unique second-by-second
attention data, Times Internet’s writers and editors
can identify the articles which are generating a
substantial amount of traffic along with post-click
reader engagement. “We take pride in our focus
to provide our readers with high-quality, engaging
content across categories and platforms. We
couldn’t be more excited to arm our teams with
Chartbeat tools to identify, optimise, and grow
the right audience,” asserted Puneet Gupt, VP &
business head of Times Internet news segment.
nnn
Punjab Kesari Group flags off 418th truck
carrying relief
materials to J&K
Continuing with its philanthropic practice
of helping deprived civilians fleeing
their homes in the terror-hit J&K border
areas, Punjab Kesari Group (Ludhiana) recently
dispatched the 418th
truck carrying relief
materials. The truck
carried articles
and commodities
required for dayt
o - d ay use by
the civilians who
migrated into safer areas in Jammu. Sponsored
by Shree Vivekanand Swarag Ashram Trust,
Model Town (Ludhiana), the truck carrying relief
materials was flagged off by Vijay Kumar Chopra,
CMD & editor-in-chief, Punjab Kesari Group,
and representatives from the trust, among others.
nnn
Entries invited for
Indian Digital Media
Awards 2016
Entries are invited for the inaugural edition
of Indian Digital Media Awards (IDMA)
2016. The awards seek to recognise news
media publishers in South Asia who have adopted
digital media
and mobile
strategies as
part of their
total product
offerings. The winners will be presented at WANIFRA
India 2016 Conference to be organised
on September 21-22 in Kolkata. Jointly hosted
by WAN-IFRA and Google, the awards will be
given away in categories like news and lifestyle
(website or mobile service), data visualisation,
online video, social media, tablet publishing
and so on. Entries for the prestigious digital
competition in the news publishing industry can
be submitted latest by June 24.
nnn
Vibes Academy
seminar
on
newspaper industry
Judicious Judgement is the title of the seminar
to be organised by Vibes Academy on June
17 at JP Hotel in Chennai. The one-day
seminar will stress over six different sessions to
be conducted by eminent personalities from the
industry. K Krishnan, print consultancy and former
VC (production), The Hindu will speak in the
session ‘My Best Press’, and others including J
Menon, media consultant and former senior GM,
The New Indian Express on futuristic possibilities
of newspapers; V Janaka Rathnakumara, AGM
& chief officer (operations), Wijeya Newspapers,
Colombo, Sri Lanka, on optimisation of critical
resources; on accounting and audit of newsprints
by V Margasahayam, partner, J Sivakumar & Co;
RP Lakshmivenkatraman, AVP (Graphics), The
Hindu on repress; and Manish Kumar, manager-
HR, Mathrubhumi (Kozhikode) on expertise in
selection, placement and training of personnel.
Audience at the seminar will compose of a
wide spectrum of eminent professionals from
reputed newspapers and commercial printers,
namely, The Times of India, The Hindu, The New
Indian Express, Dinamalar, The Daily Thanthi,
Malayala Manorama, Eenadu, Amar Ujala,
Hindustan Times, Rajasthan Patrika, Thomson
Press (Chennai), among others. Headquartered
in Chennai, Vibes Academy is one-of-its-kind
institute, dedicated to the newspaper industry
and publishing sector. The institute regularly
conducts seminars on technical, managerial and
business issues.
nnn
New national corporate
sales head
for inext
The urban broadsheet
newspaper inext from the
house of Jagran Prakashan has brought
Anirban Bagchi on board to head its national
corporate sales function. He would be based
out of Jagran's corporate office in New Delhi
and would report to the COO & editor of the
newspaper, Alok Sanwal. Having more than 15
years of experience in media and entertainment
industry across various categories with core
functional expertise in sales and marketing,
Anirban, before taking up this new role within
the Jagran Group, handled the responsibilities as
vice-president-sales (North-East) for Mid-Day.
nnn
Businessworld
appoints new COO
Sameer Sikka has been appointed as new
chief operating officer (COO) of BW
Businessworld Group. “Sikka is the perfect
person to lead the team. With 14 years of digital
media experience, his presence will improve the
group’s finances and strengthen the
digital platform,” remarked Anurag
Batra, chairman, BW Businessworld.
The group has undergone a digital
transformation, catching the current
online trend. On his part Sikka is
excited to lead the group through
this transformation and to take the
brand to the next level of growth
and digital consolidation. Sikka has
excelled in diverse fields, such as marketing, sales,
networking, relationship management, digital media,
among others, through his prior associations with
Yahoo, India Today, Monster.com, Sify, Primus
Communications and Voltas.
nnn
WAN-IFRA Audience Intelligence
Summit on
Big Data at Kuala Lumpur
In digital publishing, audience growth directly correlates
with revenue growth. This is what WAN-IFRA loudly
pronounced as its theme of the upcoming ‘Audience
Intelligence Summit’ to be organised on July 14-15, 2016 at
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. But whether it is on print, on digital devices or on social media platforms,
to gain an in-depth knowledge, an understanding of audience is vital to news media companies’
business and editorial strategies. This summit will explore how leading media companies are
currently using Big Data technologies and tools, such as analytics and Data Management Platforms
(DMP), for tracking users data and produce actionable information for editors and advertisers.
Through news media case studies and audience intelligence experts presentations, participants in
the ‘Audience Intelligence Summit’ will get useful insights for designing and implementing their
own full-fledge ‘data’ strategy.
nnn
Dainik Jagran starts production
with ppi Media solutions
In its quest for a reliable workflow to produce
over 230 local editions, Dainik Jagran has
decided to choose software solutions of ppi
Media. A range of software solutions, PlanPag,
AdPag and AdMan, has now been installed in
the company’s production sites in Bareilly and
Moradabad. The joint project by ppi Media and
Dainik Jagran was started in February 2015. In
a first step, the systems in the publishing houses
were set up, followed by a number of training
sessions and workshops. After a successful
run-up, production of the first 10 of over 230
local editions went live.
Both the Jagran Prakashan, publishers of Dainik
Jagran, and ppi Media are working full stream to
switch to the new workflow at all the other sites
during the next few
months. Besides producing daily
newspapers, Jagran Prakashan is
also active in other domains of the media industry.
The group publishes the popular daily newspapers,
namely, MiD-Day, Nai Dunia, Punjabi Jagran
and inext, all of them will also be produced with
ppi Media’s solutions. The group mainly focuses
on options for working on editorial contents and
ads simultaneously, coordinating the placement
of content and centralising newspaper planning,
for which the ppi Media’s PlanPag (planning and
production software), AdPag and AdMan (ad
solutions software) as well as ProPag (automated
page assembly software), among others have
been adopted.
nnn
Malayala Manorama promotes
Varghese Chandy to vice president
The latest development at Malayala Manorama is its promotion of Varghese
Chandy to the post of vice president. Prior to this, he worked in the capacity
of senior GM in the newspaper. Varghese served as a member of the technical
committee at ‘The Readership Studies Council of India’ and has also worked as
chairman (working group) of National Readership Survey. He is the winner of the
‘Best Research Paper’ award at The Worldwide Readership Research Symposium 2009 held in Spain.
nnn
Printers protest paper price hike
Not willing to accept frequent price rise of cardboard,
kraft and other kinds of papers, members of Offset
Printers’ Association (OPA) in Ludhiana unanimously
went on a one-day strike recently to protest undue and
unnecessary increase in the prices of papers and paper boards.
Speaking during the protest, Parveen Aggarwal, president,
OPA, appealed, “During the past 2-3 months, there have
been constant increases in prices of papers: kraft paper,
which was available at Rs 25-26/kg, has increased to Rs 30/kg; and there has been increase of
Rs 2/kg in the (price of) cardboards as well. It is not practical to withstand this undue increase.”
“In such situation, our business is also suffering due to slump in the market, such as steep paper
price hike,” he asserted. Kamal Chopra, general secretary, OPA, quoted the Essential Commodities
Act 1955 in which all kinds of paper are declared as essential commodity. “By this logic it is
the duty of the government to check undue increase in the prices of papers and paperboards,” he
pointed out, adding that the one-day strike could be further extended indefinitely if their grievances
are not addressed, which included relaxation of import duty on papers, subsidy, protection from
undue price hike.
nnn
Navbharat Times reaches out
to
citizen journalists
Leading Hindi daily Navbharat Times (NBT)
from the Times Group has given its readers a
voice through a WhatsApp citizen journalism
initiative — Hello! NBT Reporter. Through this
initiative, hundreds of story ideas have been
generated and few published. The idea behind
this initiative is to engage with newspaper readers
on issues of empowerment and modernisation of
society, and on direct impact civic issues. Since
its launch, the Hello! NBT Reporter has become a
formidable platform for readers to send newsworthy
stories on a WhatsApp number. The story ideas
that grab the editor’s attention are verified after
which they are published in the daily.
In today’s connected world, it is only fitting that
editors listen to their readers and engage with
them in a two-way communication. Hello! NBT
Reporter invites readers to share their concerns
on a WhatsApp number.
