PaidContent marks a milestone

The acquisition of PaidContent by the UK-based Guardian group confirms (again) my belief that "blog" is just a word -- It can turn into a business and become part of the mainstream media. Indian-born Rafat Ali has taken the group of sites logging the growth of the digital publishing industry in a "collablog" publishing venture to new heights and has thus become a pioneer. He joins the likes of Sabeer Bhatia and Vinod Khosla in marking new milestones in the Internet economy. The New York Times found it relevant enough to write a meaningful story

Can Pitchh.com make the ad biz more transparent?

My friend and fellow blog-world philosopher Rajesh Lalwani has brought in the business of competitive pitching into the open -- and on the Net -- with Pitchh.com.
Yet to check this site out but the idea looks promising and disruptive. Basically, we can try to answer the question: If it is competitive, who should there be a closed loop?

CBI= Central Bureau of Insinuation?

The Arushi murder case in Noida is proving to be an excellent case study on police and media behaviour in India.
CBI fumbles and bumbles
Media grumbles and mumbles
And they both tumble.

Questions and Answers:

Does the media think CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) is a judicial or quasi-judicial agency?

Yes

(For Gawd's sake, someone should tell them it is just the federal police...just a bunch of guys who swapped khakhi trousers for ill-fitting safari suits, ok?)

Does the media understand or care to explain to the readers/viewers the nature of CBI?

Who cares? A story a day keeps sensible analysis away

Can you cover up one bad allegation with a whitewash spin?

Yes. Why not? CBI is in the business of uncovering crime, not blaming the innocent. That is a job for the media to do.

Why is Arushi being the only victim getting so much media attention?

Because she is a regular middle-class TV-watcher-populace's game.

Does this help anyone?

Who cares? You can't win elections with TRPs, but you can make money

---

In the light of all the above points, here are some new expansions for CBI:

Central Bureau of Insinuation
Central Bureau of Improvisation
Central Bureau of Innuendo
Central Book-keepers of Innocence

Inside Bloomberg..reads like a movie script (And the discovery of a legendary journo!)

Anyone wants to write a Wall Street-meets-media movie script? This story on Bloomberg, whose terminals dot financial dealing rooms worldwide (and which played a vital role as Brand X during my years in Reuters) can provide valuable grist. A very good read.

Now, I wrote the para above a few minutes ago and wanted to find out who wrote that riveting, well-researched stuff that seemed like great journalism and great literature all at once. Turns out she is a colossal woman, knocking 80 years of age and a legend in her lifetime..
I did not grow up reading Fortune magazine, and therefore, I am not surprised I had not heard of her before. But I am patting myself on the back for smelling out such a figure by simply waking up to the quality of her work. Here is a biographical sketch of Carol J. Loomis, the author of that piece which I strongly recommend.

The Google-Yahoo war should go to WTO, not Washington

I chanced upon this post by the Silicon Valley's respected Net-watcher Om Malik, and it seems he has forgotten his days in Delhi. Basically, he wonders if the war over Google's alliance with Yahoo (and by implication, Microsoft's acquisition/merger attempts) should go to the regulators -- by which he means Washington's powers-that-be.
The Internet is a global medium, and I don't quite fancy US-centric people holding forth as if the rest of the world does not matter. They have not learnt their lessons from Vietnam/Iraq, whatever...


So, here is my beginner's guide to anyone commenting on the Google-Yahoo saga

1) The US is not the only nation in the world. It is one of about 150. George W. Bush doesn't get this. Do you?

2) Google is a global search engine and Yahoo is a global media company. The World Trade Organisation (WTO), not Washington, is the place to decide anti-competition issues on this.

3) Online advertising is not the only kind of advertising. Google's share should be measured as a part of global advertising revenues in all media.

4) If online ads are to be treated separately, let it be done only for US IP addresses and let there be technologies to segregate and analyse all this. (That will give use to more startups.Wow!) Or else, revenues should be segregated on the basis of geographical origin.

5) Google is leading the process of creative destruction in the global media industry as a whole. Anything disruptive in this nature is by definition pro-competition until such time as it acquires critical mass in market-share. And digital ads have only just begun!

6) If Microsoft's desktop market share in OS or the browser war is not a problem, why should Google's online revenue share should be?

7)In the case of document standards, the International Standards Organisation showed the way to go. Let there be a similar global discourse (oops, do they use this word at Stanford? Must ask my friends from Oxford). This should be done at the World Trade Organisation.

Geneva, not Washington, is the place to decide this. And Mountain View and Wall Street are small dots on Google Earth.

Or how about the United Nations, Om?

The Logic of the Four Screens

The "Silver Screen," television, PC and now mobile handsets --media convergence is increasingly about converging these four and optimising their mix. I am not even talking about print here. My friend Ajay Jain makes an interesting analysis of the four-screen play in his site here

Wisdom on the Sun Valley: Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one

At Sun Valley, Idaho, global media moguls are meeting this week for the annual retreat that is fabled to generate mega deals. Now, will moguls be spelt as Mughals this week? In other words, how important is India for the likes of Google, Yahoo, Newscorp et al?
No doubt this is an interesting market, but, as the Reuters report observes, the US economy is the prime concern, and issues like the Microsoft-Yahoo saga dominate.
Now, while that happens and we look for the signals, here is some sobering insight. When the likes of Murdoch, Eric Schmidt (Google) and others confabulate, where are the journos?
They are busy reporting it all. Is any of the moguls/Mughals in question a former entertainer or journalist? Very few, if at all.
In the end, this is about business.
All those who have woolly ideas about the power of the media must remember my friend Srini's e-mail drop-line: The freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.
That saying, I believe, is credited to A.J. Liebling of The New Yorker magazine

Media vs Media...When one news organisation covers another

What happens when a media organisation does a story about a rival? How does the dog cover dog when its job is to eat it? An interesting article in New York Times is at its ranting best.

I am not even commenting, but the plot does look familiar.

State of Hindi news television ...hilarious

A promising site provides much-needed satire on Indian media.



Fly You Fools - An Indian Webcomic about Life.

Courtesy: http://www.flyyoufools.com

Why YouTube must be saved -- (Oh, help me watch the Bhutto speech and Liril ad)

YouTube is in the news. In the US, privacy groups are worried that it may be forced to share viewer data. In India, two companies of the T-Series group hav dragged the online video-sharing site owned by Google to court for copyright violations.
But I had the delight of catching Riz Khan, the former BBC and CNN anchor, again today after I logged on to YouTube. Riz is now with Al Jazeera which interviewed me yesterday on Asian economic issues. I could not watch myself on air because Indian direct-to-home cable operators don't seem to be offering the Qatar-based global channel.
YouTube and online television are a boon for people like me, who like to have a choice. It would be a pity if the channel does not evolve a meaningful business model to help us enjoy and find online videos. I have stumbled on some great stuff on YouTube, like rare Carnatic music recordings and a Bhutto speech made in 1971 that brings out the flavour of the man for a generation of folks like me who did not have access to such stuff.
YouTube is also a delightful source for retromercials -- or ads that bring nostalgia back. Here is that lovely Liril ad we grew up on.
Or a piece of music that made me sit up and discover a guy called A.S. Dilipkumar -- who later became known as Bollywood and Tamil movie composer A. R. Rahman.
Somone puh-leez make sure YouTube does not suffer.
Are you listening, Sakina Arsiwala?

The Long Tail? I prefer to say the Shorter Head

An engaging concept that is shaking the world is that of the Long Tail, a book by Chris Anderson based on an article he had written -- to the effect that content and much else in the age of Internet is getting fragmented in choices and opening up countless possibilities in content and commerce. This is being challenged in a Harvard Business Review which in turn is being discussed rather well in this piece in TechCrunch.
I am yet to catch the original book, but it is intuitive as well as empirical that we are spending more time on the Net and doing stuff I would not have been able to do as a kid.
(For instance, the other day I caught on YouTube an engaging video of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's outburst at the UN Council in December 1971, when Bangladesh was carved out of Pakistan -- it certainly inspired me enough to want to read more of that period, and created a "demand" inside me! -- more on that later)
Now, the Harvard review, in my opinion, must be analysing "facts" of the present, while concluding that the Long Tail is not going far in generating a sufficient variety of demand.
My argument is not that the tail will lengthen, but the head will become smaller.
Mass media of today is like the head, and the Internet is like the tail. People will continue to need some common ground for their social and communal needs but will flock to bigger sources for bigger things.
I am beginning to liken the Internet like water: We use it all the time, and have various devices and uses for it and do it based on our ease and necessity. If you draw water from a river and irrigate a field with a canal, the chances are high you visit the river-bank less everyday. It is a bit complex from the point of view of advertising metrics, but the Long Tail and the Short Head are a fact of life now, Harvard or no Harvard.

Who is PR for? Companies or their honchos?

"You don't do the Boss column anymore?" the PR person asks.
"No," I reply, with an increasing sense of glee.

Dealing with public relations folks is part of the drill I have to go through, but you will not believe the number of PR agency dudes and dudettes who have called me about a column called "Boss Day Out" which we at Hindustan Times also ran for a while later under the tag "Boss After Work."
It was a nice thing to tell readers about the other side of the blue suits and pinstripes, but it can get a bit sickening when every two-bit trainee in a two-bit PR agency calls you up to discuss the two-bit CEO of a two-bit company. Very often, the request was to prop up a 20-something with a fat title who got there because papa told him.
Ah, figures. The honcho signs cheque, agency pleases honcho, agency hounds press. All is well with the world. But does that do the company any good?
There are companies that I have never heard of or rarely so, and the PR person would call up and say nothing about the company and often prop up somebody who in our scheme of things is hardly high enough (Gawd! vice-president-marketing isn't quite it!).
That's some tripe hype gripe!

LA Times or Layoff Times? Net is in. Nupes are down. Jobs are cut

Here is a story of job cuts in Los Angeles Times, with the details of how the Internet is eating into the newspaper business in the US.
It feels strange at a time when newspaper launches are getting common all over India, with new editions being launched all around and even brave, new brands hitting the market, even in the English language business, where, presumably, readers have or will have increasing access to the Web.
Am I missing something here?

The dilemma of business journalism -- or how the US media messed up on corporate woes

A perceptive article in Newsweek talks of how the US media failed to predict corporate troubles lays threadbare the intricacies of business reportage -- which the writer remarks suffers from the same syndrome as sports journalism. You celebrate what you need to examine, and forget looking deep into something because you need to cultivate the sources or hang out with them.

Hiring biases are real!

The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) represents advanced countries. And, despite all the talk of political correctness, there are clear biases that are part of the recruitment culture there. A survey by OECD illustrates this. Here is the release.

I write this after my last post on supposed biases in media organisations -- just to illustrate a point that biases are everywhere!

Ethnic Indians arrive in global media scene (Adventures through the glass ceiling?)

First, a bit of tom-tomming. This post is the 100th since this media blog kicked off about three years ago, when I started this to illustrate the then-largely-unknown concept of the blog to a bunch of media students I was lecturing at COMMITS, a media school in Bangalore..
It is fitting that I should hit this landmark number with a story in Mint on how Indians are rising to new highs in global (read Western) media giant labels such as Time and Wall Street Journal. The story links these appointments to the rise of the "India story" which kind of devalues the merit of the people in question-- as if to say that these people are making it big because they are Indian and not solely because they are capable of running global set-ups. I am not sure if that is the correct way to look at it.
Some of the dudes in question are my former colleagues who left Indian shores for greener pastures. and have worked hard to get where they are. There is plenty of Indian talent both at home and abroad, though some of the people in question have swapped native Indian wisdom and depth for US-ishtyle reportage which has its own charms and balancing qualities.
When I left myself for Reuters, there were those who cautioned me about the perceived glass ceiling in international media companies. I did not find any significant problem, except with occasional individuals or their worldviews that concealed unconscious biases.
I will not say there are no biases at all in Western media organisations, but I will add that Indian companies have their own biases. There was certainly a period in both information technology and media when Indians had to work harder to get to the same spot but that has changed a lot. It is an evolving world in which professional values are being increasingly recognised, though there is some way to go both in Indian and international organisations.
Some look at everything through the looking glass of self-loving mirrors and others through imagined glass ceilings. In the end, the details differ from case to case, person to person.
Now for the big question: These are big labels they work for, but will they stay big? In the "World is Flat" globe of level-playing fields, is the media industry an exception?
Bring on a guitar. I'll sing "the answer is blowing in the wind."

Should you blame an Indian sub-editor who has not heard of Johann Bach?

A Goa-based group has pulled a fast one on three Indian newspapers, concocting a story about the arrest of a Nazi war criminal called Johann Bach. Reuters has a highly effective blog that has chronicled the fiasco.
Mercifully, I have heard of the Western composer Bach and even Nazi war criminals...but I am not particularly outraged by the goof-up. It is true that there is a new generation of journalists in which many lack historical knowledge. It is equally true that chief sub-editors and news editors of the old vintage are few and far between, thus reducing the cross-checking culture.
The Reuters blog rightly remarks that a Google search would have got an easy cross-check.
However, I do want to ask if Western reporters or subs have heard of Thyagaraja or Muthuswami Dikshitar, the leading Carnatic music composers or face frequent challenges on learning about 18th Century India when they do their day-job.
The point I am trying to make it is that Indian journalists working in the English language media have to carry an enormous amount of general knowledge on both the Western world and India to make things work.
Frankly, there is neither sufficient incentive nor enough facilities or mentoring available for them to do this seriously.
A call centre agent with a fake American accent makes more money at the age of 20 than a master's degree-holding print journalist in a leading newspaper at the entry level. Unemployment is not exactly a problem for fluent English speakers in India, and the old charms of smooth writing or idealism is no longer drawing enough people into Indian newspapers (the better ones with similar talent go for advertising, television or even consulting jobs!).
You gotta pay and train for the right talent. I don't see that happening.

Bloggers need to honour copyright -- and must be respected for theirs!

I spoke at a workshop organised by the Indian Blog and New Media Society last weekend, and faced some questions on copyright of content produced by bloggers. It stays with them, as far as I know -- but then, they also need to honour other's rights.
Here is an article on how Big Media is watching bloggers. Well, Big Media should also realise that bloggers are also challenging them, somewhere!

Crime is hot on Indian TV, but it will not pay for long

If there was statistical evidence needed for the overkill that Indian news TV channels are doing with crime stories, especially the Arushi Talwar murder case in Noida/Delhi, it is here.
An article in The Hindu's Sunday magazine says: "A study by the Centre for Media Studies (CMS) says that six channels beamed news and special programmes on the double murder for 39.30 hours out of a total 92 hours prime time — from 19:00 hrs to 23:00 hrs — between May 16 and June 7."

Here is my prediction. In the next six months to one year, there will be a dramatic shift away from crime news.

A lot of this had to do in my opinion/interpretation with the prices of television and cable connections dropping to points where TV sets and satellite TV became affordable for millions. This class, which I call the "neo-TV-literate" was wooed with stuff that turned them on in the TRP game. At the same time, the cost of launching new channels and the imperatives of winning market share generated a cycle of "competitive populism" in the space from the supply side.

The cycle is playing out like an IPO boom in the stock market and something -- as they say -- has gotta give.
I do not expect gross TRPs to rule the roost at all and we will have an ordered play of TV news channels. I am not going into the ethical, social and responsibility-related issues here. Some of them are valid, but I don't believe in rantings passing off as informed discourse.

Some useful advice for young/budding/aspiring journos

I found these focused points from Aniruddha Bahal (famous for Tehelka exposes and the Bad Sex writing award for his novel) highly commendable to journos who still believe in looking for something beyond raises and bylines.