Media Matters - II
Online, the future!
Don’t know about you, but there are no early morning cat fights at my home over who-gets-the-morning-newspapers-first these days as my daughter does not feel ‘cool’ to be reading a physical paper. Online is her choice. Mind you, she’s well informed about things to know. That is, what the new generation thinks they ought to know. Therefore, I am left with the entire load of dailies that keeps me busy for a couple of hours. Thank God for small mercies.
Ramesh Kumar
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With India’s demographic profile changing pretty fast – a youthful nation in the offing – newspapers are fast losing their old world charm. No matter how many changes The Hindu, Hindustan Times, The Times of India, Deccan Herald, Mid-Day, etc announce to recapture the old magic, the decline of newspaper is inevitable. Why? Simple. Media pundit Adrian Monck would put this inevitability to the changing world and, mind you, nothing to do with journalism!
Anybody who can key in an email – unassisted, that is – has certainly read one news item at least online every day. Because, there are several ‘digital distractions’ on the info highway while we login for checking tonnes of mails that are clogging our inboxes. Moreover, online news are more recent – hardly a few minutes or worst, a few hours fresh. Definitely, more current than the morning dailies that we consumed before we stepped out into the working world. Or put it differently, the morning papers carry news of the previous day. Yes, that’s true since most dailies close shop before midnight to meet printing deadlines and logistic nightmare ensuring you and I get our morning cuppa along with newspapers. So, what we read in the morning papers is stale news, absolutely!
Just not e-paper alone
No wonder, every daily worth its salt – be it English or vernacular – has embraced the digital world with its own online presence. There are no exceptions. If the paper has no digital presence, well, they have not arrived yet, in a manner of speaking. Unlike in the past, digital presence does not mean just the e-paper – that is, one gets to read the digital version of the physical paper by flipping through page by page on the web. Time consuming, but hep and cool, no doubt!
“A significant shift in news consumption is taking place among younger generations,” remarks a 2008 research report brought out by Associated Press. “Younger consumers, ages 18-34, have adopted ways of getting their news that are much different from those of past generations. Younger consumers are not only less reliant on the newspaper to get their news; they also consume news across a multitude of platforms and sources, all day, constantly. Among the key touch points in the new environment are online videos, blogs, online social networks, mobile devices, RSS, word of mouth, Web ports and search engines,” it adds.
At times when I have to catch a flight and therefore miss scanning the daily at home and equally miss the free copy made available at most airports, I don’t simper these days. I flip open my smart phone and read my favourite daily online. Very convenient! Mind you, nobody is going to borrow your own copy of e-paper. Probably, the co-passenger sitting next to you on the departure lounge won’t even know what one’s upto.
The Hindu, one of the oldest but technology-savvy English daily, has revamped its online presence very recently. “The new design offers a refreshing mix of easy-on-the-eye layout, rich visual content, and intuitive navigation. It is optimised for the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. It has topic-based exploratory and research capability. In a few months, the full content of the old website, including the archive, will migrate to the redesigned website. We will be introducing multi-media content, social media tools, and other advanced features progressively,” pointed out its preamble.
The Times of India is an old master at this game. Its group publications have excellent online presence. It is equally another issue that its e-paper is as bulky as physical cousin! Hindustan Times is no babe in the woods. Latest breaking news – with the assistance of wire services – are constantly updated throughout the day, by a dedicated web team under an able web-editor. In fact, some of them have exclusive online correspondents filing special stories which nevertheless are carried in the physical version subsequently.
Convenient and instant
Online news is something similar to watching – say, reading live news on TV. It’s a lot more convenient. The viewer-reader can customise his or her tastes: if you are a sports freak, you can customize in such a way that the homepage shows sports news/articles, interviews, etc predominantly thus pushing low-interest political, business/economic stories to the backburner. That is to say, you’re the chef. You decide what you want to read when you click on the URL of your favourite newspaper.
Speaking honestly, there is a plethora of stuff that is accommodated on the homepage. The web site designers will have a helluva time creating the site map, then ensuring that the look and feel of the website is ‘cool’. Most websites of prominent dailies have boxes on the home page indicating ‘the most read/viewed stories’, ‘the most emailed stories’, etc. This, in a way, gives the visitor what to read or look for: sort of ‘trending topics’.
Future money spinner
Online dailies, though not making big money, are fast gaining currency with the target group – notwithstanding the fact it is definitely expensive vis-à-vis the physical version given the fact that one has to shell out for the WAP (wireless application protocol) application on one’s smart phone or for the net connectivity at home or office. Despite this cost considerations, it is the most favourite medium to gain ‘knowledge’ – however scrappy the knowledge maybe.
One major reason for its popularity is that instant reaction of readers which they can express through comments under each news item - that is online. While some are moderated, most of them are unregulated. In a democratic set up like India, viewers and readers can jolly well get away with anything – until the website owners or web editors realise the legal implications of such uncensored views and remove them from the site. It’s truly instant. Otherwise, one has to write letters to the editor either through the conventional snail mail or through the email. In the online world, it is instant: now and here. Feel so? Get it out of your chest right now.
Greater visitors’ footfall means better revenue model for dailies to demand more moolah for banner advertisements on their website. No, the publisher-owners have not reached the stage where they can demand a premium. But the day is not far off when digital version will outrun its print cousin. A Booz & Allen report, released in May 2009, points out that whereas newspapers took 127 years to reach $20 billion in advertising revenues in the US, and cable television took 25 years, online media have garnered that amount in just 13 years. For advertisers, the experimentation stage is over. No doubt, the downloading speed is low, but that is bound to change with the advent of 3G in India.
By the way, the old rationale that one can take ONLY a newspaper to the toilet does not hold water anymore. You can jolly well carry your smart phone for online reading of your favourite website while seated on the hot seat!
(Ramesh Kumar is a journalist, with more than 25 years exposure to the world of print, radio, television and web in India and abroad as well. Send in your feedback to procon@aol.in)
