Why Murdoch is right on charging for online news

The Web is abuzz after media baron Rupert Murdoch of New Corp said that his group's newspapers planned to charge for online news/content.
I have no problem with that. Though obituaries and criticism of such a move are afloat on the selfsame Net.
As an experienced journalist, I make a few simple observations.
It costs money to make people do reportage
Credibility comes from known sources that employ processes
Bloggers and others who simply extract published news from the Web and repeate it have no viable business model and breaking news cannot be ad-hoc.
If it is offered free, it has to be accounted in financial terms somewhere--at least by cross-subsidisation.
For more than a decade now, newspaper publishers have been shooting themselves in the foot in order to understand the new medium better.
They have tried to behave like news agencies, reporting 24/7
They have offered content free, only to find their own revenues and circulation falling.
They have invested in technology and branding, but online ads have not got the traction to take it beyond a point.
Above all, they have to suffer sites like Google News that looks like a newspaper and rides on free content from the papers and other online news sites.
Something's gotta give.
If Murdoch charges, will other newspapers see it as an opportunity or a threat? I don't know, but  I do know that sooner or later, viable models for both credibility and profitability in online news has to come in.

The Printed Blog R.I.P.

It was touted as a great idea.
Print blogs. Sell them.
They didn't.
Here is the story.

But publishing is not over yet, either in print or online. I believe bloggers often confuse venting and airing of views with meaningful content. Publishing is about getting the focus right.
Truman Capote once ended a book review, saying, "That's not writing, that's typing.
I want to paraphrase that. "Don't confuse printing with publishing."

Online ad revenues zoom on....

Despite the recession, digital advertising is growing robustly--and in fact more so as advertisers find it sensible in getting the right bang for buck, says Zenith Optimedia. Here is a report.

Is your newsroom ready for the future?

Here is a video from a panel discussion involving the Reuters editor-in-chief and other leading lights. I haven't watched it, but can ask a cheeky question. In the 21st Century, will people have the time and inclination to watch leisurely panel discussions?

Citizen journalists can go to YouTube school

Here is how

Murdoch thinks newspapers will go digital --and won't be free on the Web

Rupert Murdoch should know -- it costs money to produce news and content. Why should newspapers give it for free--especially when the Web is what is putting them into trouble?
Here is the baron telling us how things should move--or the way he sees them moving.

End of Television --A lovely, inspired piece of writing

Please catch this lovely piece in New York's maverick blogazine, Gawker, on how online videos and help creative television writers circumvent the suffocating studio system.
Internet is revolutionising media, and I have written many times in the past about how TV is changing and will end as we have known it. But this piece makes it read like a fairy tale.

Breaking News--That's Ram Gopal Varma's next muse

He is done with Veerappan, the Mafia and skinny beauties. Ram Gopal Varma's next muse is Breaking News.
RGV was across the road from my office today at Religare's elegant art gallery, in the company of Amitabh Bachchan, who, a little birdie tells me, will play a character fashioned after NDTV's Prannoy Roy (story revolves around a channel called India 24/7--good for the brand's ailing stature)

The film, "Rann" (Battle) has the tagline "Truth is Terrible" and seems from early hints like an engaging film.
Ramu (touching his cheek about six times in the 10 minutes I watched him) said the movie's intention is to question the business of TV news channels blindly playing the TRP (television rating point) game.
RGV's film has a social message. Now that is Breaking News, for sure.
But seriously, I am glad my publicist friend invited me to cross the road. For one, the Big B of Bollywood spoke at length in his attractive, articulate way about '21st Century Journalism'--having turned blogger himself.
I also salute Ramu's latest attempt to ponder over the mad business of mushrooming TV channels in cut-throat competition that raises too many questions.
I might accuse RGV of stealing a page from another of the latter-day Cinema Verite kind, Madhur Bhandarkar, who made "Page 3" about the colour pages game, but all that is in good intent.
I like the fact that when media cannot introspect enough, Bollywood steps in. I say this in the memory of my late friend Anil Saari, who called Bollywood the Sixth Estate.
Here is a quick list of celebrated Hollywood and Bollywood movies based on life in the media. Surf on to IMDB and look for details

Hollywood: Network (on TV), Front Page, Citizen Kane (newspapers)
Bollywood: New Delhi Times, Page 3.

Of course, many other movies featured media stories, but these are top-of-the-mind.

Online video may challenge TV, but ads are another story

I have argued that "anytime,anywhere" video through the Internet is going to kill prime-time TV, but then, there is a key puzzle that is yet to be solved. What happens to advertising money?
Web is not quite TV when it comes to ad money--at least not yet.
Here is a report that says the jury is out on the Web as an advertising medium.

Remembering how newspapers were produced in the 1970s

I remember the time in the 1980s when I started out in a newspaper.

The ticker tapes, also known as teleprinters, made a loud noise

They were accompanied by the sound of clattering typewriters going tik-tak-tuk-tak and triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing when the line changed.

Copies were edited by hand, with sub-editors using symbols that resembled today's software code.

They were composed in molten lead in a dingy room below, and laid out for proofing by men in blue uniforms.

We had to mind our steps as we moved down, and be careful not to let the black ink touch our shirts or the molten lead burn our hands

Proofreaders, many in thick glasses that served as career souveiners, matched copy with proofs.

One separate machinist operated a contraption that composed headlines.

Things have come a long way to Twitter!

Read this to get an idea of how things were then

Media fragmentation story gets murkier

Accenture has come out with details on the sea change in media consumption. Here is the story.

The Future Of Newspapers: Are micropayments the way out?

First came print advertising because people read newspapers.
Then came TV advertising, that took away some of those ads
Then came the era of advertising-supported content, as readers became more of "consumers" being targeted by advertisers who signed large cheques.
Then came the part about newspapers adjusting to the demands of advertisers, and addressing readers as "target segments"
That phase is still on now, but the Web is changing --or has changed things--all over again.
Classified ads have migrated to the Web.
Newspaper Websites are not really getting that much ads.
Digital ads are growing,but are they the way out?
How do we price content? Journalism is a costly business, involves travel and credibility -- and unbiased coverage that is under constant pressure from politicians or advertisers in some form or the other.
In the age of the Internet, the business has become more complicated. New York Times has its property on mortgage, and Chicago Tribune filed for bankruptcy.
So what is the future of the newspaper?
This article in Time magazine discusses it, and apparently bets on micropayments. Oh well, let us see how it all goes.

Barkha Dutt vs Bloggers, Journalists vs Awards

It has been a while since I posted on this blog. It does not make sense to take time off from a busy day to write blog posts few will read, particularly because I don't write/carry gossip and more often than not, discuss strategic or professional issues more of interest to the serious pro. I am that boring!
But I decided to take note of two developments this week with just quick remarks. Being part of the profession and being an acquaintance of people in the thick of controversial events puts me in a strange situation: If I speak out, I am eating a fellow dog, and if I keep mum, I lose the fun of letting pass two significant events related to the issues this blog professes to peruse. So I walk a careful wedge here.

1) Barkha Dutt, arguably India's most popular English TV news anchor, has hit a fresh controversy, having elicited an apology from a blogger on grounds that he wrote defamatory stuff. No court case here, but a quick, grovelling apology. She must have been on the right side of law, or the guy probably was in no mood to fight.
But more interesting is the fact that this has raised the hackles of the blogger community, and on last call a new Facebook group has been formed accusing this icon of free TV of gagging critics (The last one formed to criticise her coverage of the 26/11 attacks had around 4,500 members)
What gives? What's going on?
I have clearly said before in this blog that bloggers are not above the law, and relevant media laws apply. So I am forced to defend Barkha on that ground. I have to tell my blogger friends to know their responsibility.
But discretion is the better part of legal valour and Barkha must know that large numbers of people criticising her is not something she can overlook or ignore in the age of democracy plus the Internet. Bloggers need to realise that freedom of speech is not freedom to break the law.
Sensitive use of language is at the heart of the issue.
But then, who cares for that anymore?

2) P. Sainath, venerable, prodding rural-sensitive journalist, who has won many an award for his moving accounts of farmer's plights and drought-hit areas, has turned down a Padma Shri --something fellow professionals including Barkha Dutt have accepted in the past. He says a government award reduces the credibility of the journo, or something to that effect. I do want to clap, though I may be making some foes in the process.
Honestly, journalism is more fun when the rich and the mighty squirm at you than smile at you. But then, that cannot be at the cost of responsible journalism, and sometimes, has financial consequences.
It is a thankless profession, I tell you!

Whose media? Which People--A perceptive article

Here is a perceptive piece in The Hindu, which questions the way India's media--particularly the electronic one-- is functioning.
The angle is not new--can the media be run like any other business?
The answer, says the author, is no.
So what's new?
I think two things are.
One is the sense of detail with which he rips apart the edifice of some of the bad, insensitive professional practices and social pretensions.
Two, after the recent Mumbai attacks and the way both social and media issues are discussed, it brings back into the limelightlarger issues in a deeper way.

Online news gains in credibility, but not blogs: survey

There is food for thought...though the process is complex, people are increasingly valuing news from online sources. I think there is tremendous implication from this. Like "Indy" record labels in music, there could be "Indy" news labels soon--even if some of them are controversial, opinionated or biased.
Sadly, in the online world, it is not easy to prescribe to anyone what they should read, and people, I suspect, have a bias for a bias (of their kind) in news. However, there is a clear indication that blogs do not carry much credibility as news sources.
Here is the press release from TNS, on a survey that indicates the rise of online news.

OUR NEW DIGITAL FRIEND? WE NOW TRUST ONLINE NEWS AS MUCH AS WE TRUST TV NEWS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FROM FRIENDS

 
Blogs are least reliable among 13 easily accessible information sources

 

New Delhi/ India, December 11^th 2008 — We now trust the information we get from online news to the same degree as news information from TV and information / recommendations from friends. But we have a poor opinion of blogs, ranking them the least trustworthy way of understanding the world around us. These are some of the findings in a new study entitled Digital World, Digital Life, from global market insight group TNS.
 

Conducted in 16 countries, Digital World, Digital Life examines online behaviour and perspectives around the world. More than 27,000 survey participants were asked to select from 13 sources of information: online news, blogs, Wikipedia, company websites, trade website reviews, user forum reviews, product comparison sites, TV news, paid-for newspapers, free newspapers, company brochures, industry magazines and friends' recommendations. Respondents were asked to rate a variety of information sources on a scale of 1 (don't trust at all) to 10 (trust completely).
 

On a global basis, four out of ten of respondents (42%) highly trust* good old recommendations from friends. However, a roughly equal number highly trust TV news (41%), online news (40%) and newspapers (39%). Blogs are perceived as inherently less credible, taking the lowest score with only one in ten of respondents (10%) trusting this source. This is noticeably lower than even free newspapers (19%) and company brochures (18%). Other online sources fared well, such as product comparison websites (34%) and expert reviews on trade websites (31%)
 
* trust highly is based on respondents rating 8, 9 or 10 out of ten
 
There were quite marked variations in the levels of trust for particular countries. Chinese respondents were the most trusting of all nations on all but one of the information sources discussed. The exception in China is Wikipedia, with only around a quarter (26%) of Chinese respondents seeing Wikipedia as trustworthy. This is in comparison to respondents in Germany, where just over half (52%) say they trust the site. In Germany, Wikipedia scored the highest level of trust among all the 13 information sources identified in the survey.
 

Three countries – the US, France and Italy – now claim to trust online news more than they do TV news. In the US, the results were 38% trust online vs 33% for TV news, while for France the figures were 28% online vs 24% TV news. In Italy, around four of ten respondents (41%) trust online news and less than a quarter (24%) trust TV news.  Scandanavians surveyed by TNS have the highest level of trust of all in respect to online news, with around half of all respondents in Finland (54%), Sweden (50%), Norway (48%) and Denmark (48%) trusting this medium.
 

Other highlights include inherent trust in TV news in Finland (78%) and Sweden (59%), while in the UK a strong distrust of traditional newspapers stands out with only 23% saying they trust this information source, a much lower score than online news (40%).
 

Arno Hummerston, Managing Director, TNS Global Interactive, said: "It's interesting to note how credible online news has become with respondents ranking this roughly equal to TV news or recommendations from friends. The move of traditional media into the online space has ensured that the trust traditional media have long enjoyed has spread across online-only sources too.  But this is tempered by the lack of trust that surrounds blogs, with this online medium right at the bottom of the 13 information sources we identified.  With no real accountability (save for an invitation to post comments), offline engagement or demonstrable credibility, the subjectivity of this online medium ensures a uniform low score in our survey for trustworthiness."
 

Realty TV check: Indian broadcasters in mounting losses

So it seems controversy is an expensive thing as well.

Media is a costly business, and like aviation,investors love it for the feel and prestige...money is just a pretension. A lot of funds ( I suspect) take strategic stakes in media companies because it offers a lever of sorts (conspiracy theories, anyone?). Anyway, here is a story on how broadcasters are in a crunch.

How Mumbai 26/11 shaped the future of media in India

Mumbai, 26/11/2008

Terrorists carried sat-phones
Eyewitnesses used Twitter feeds
TV cameras rolled live
Social activists attacked them on blogs
Citizens rallied around Facebook pages

That was the world's first instance of "convergence terrorism" or Terrorism 2.0 as I said.
It is clear that media will never be the same again.
Facebook groups sprung up against Barkha Dutt, India's most familiar English TV news anchorette. And pieces by activist writers like Harini Calamur (like this took on the media.
Here are my brief observations.

1)Media will never be the same again, because Internet activism is acting as a countervailing influence on conventional media. Even if they care only for viewership, and claim publicly that only viewers matter, there will be some influence.

2) There are still a huge number of people out there who believe the role of the media as a noble "watchdog" purveying facts, presenting it responsibly. Who is going to PAY for this journalism? Can these activists subsidise the high cost of the publishing business?

3) Increasingly, social bookmarking and e-mail are emerging as powerful drivers of attention.
Gnani Sankaran's piece
questioning the Taj as Mumbai's icon became quite a rage on the Net.

New Media, Old Media? It is all convergence

In the end, it is all media....


New, old media good for each other, Huffington says

Ban ‘live’ reporting of hostage rescue missions?

Thought provoking post from a respected media blog.

Ban ‘live’ reporting of hostage rescue missions?

via sans serif by churumuri on 11/27/08

"Several foreign nationals are trapped in the Taj Hotel Mahal"

"The top management of a multinational corporation was meeting…"

"Terrorists are suspected to be on the 9th floor…"

"NSG troops are about to have arrived in Mumbai…"

"NSG commandos have entered the Hotel…"

Some of the information telecast live by all news channels on yesterday's terror attack on Bombay.

SHRINIDHI HANDE writes from Madras: News channels have an objective—to fetch the latest news and share them with viewers, much before a competitor channel does that. But I feel this habit of indiscriminate live reporting, while a combat operation is in progress, can be catastrophic for the success of the military operations against terror.

Let us just think for a while. Do we really need to know everything on a 'as soon as it happens' basis? I feel not. Whether NSG commandos have just arrived at airport, or have entered the hotel or are on the first floor or second at this moment, is not necessary to be revealed to the general public on a realtime basis.

Showing such news live, will be immensely useful only to terrorists and their supporters outside.

Consider this. The commandos only know that the militants are somewhere inside the hotel, but the militants know everything about the movements and positions of their pursuers through TV.

Like:

# Who is on their trail (Army/ NSG/ local police, etc)

# What is their ETA (estimated time of arrival), which tells them, how much time they have before a gun battle would begin)

# Where they are right now, at the main entrance/ just entered their floor

# How is the world responding? Is there pressure mounting on the government to succumb to the demands of terrorists to get the hostages freed (so that they can act tough during negotiation)?

# How many of their friends are alive or dead (so that they can assess their strength)?

# What has been the impact of their strike-how many police and civilian dead, the current morale of police, who all as been detained/suspected?

# Live visuals of the street-to assess a possible escape strategy

# What information about them the outside world has (which floor they are in, their head count etc. And much more…

In my view, all this information, while useful to viewers and relatives of victims, also helps the terrorists/ militants to consolidate their position and pose a greater challenge to commandos trying to hunt them down and/ or rescue the hostages.

Why is our media helping them by airing live all the sensitive information about the anti terror operations?

The common man does not need to know them on a live basis.

Can't the information & broadcasting ministry think of banning live reporting during a hostage crisis? Let the channels air the news with a delay of few hours, so that the police and security agencies will have a lead time of few hours, wherein terrorists would be as equally uninformed as they are.

Please note that I am not advocating censorship. I am all for free speech and expression. What I am proposing, is that security agencies should have the power to impose a delay of say three to six hours w.r.t live reporting of anti terror operations.

Let the TV channels record whatever they want, but they should be aired only after a gap of few hours. I do not think anyone loses anything with this.

The movie A Wednesday also shares same opinion. I feel the good old days of oncein a day news bulletin was far better.

What do you think?

(This post is dedicated to all the brave police officials and innocent civilians who lost their lives in yesterday's terror attack in Bombay)

Mumbai attacks shows shakeout in Indian TV news

In the middle of a very busy run, here are a few quick thoughts on how TV News is not going to be the same again in India.

Great reportage from the ground on Times Now, Headlines Today and CNN-IBN, not necessarily in that order. NDTV seems to be lagging -- and very fatigued.

Lots of great articulation from the ground by tireless reporters that I have never heard of or seen much. A great new generation of television journalists is in the making.

Hindi news channels turn mainstream, and everybody watches and surfs on such occasions across channels and languages

TV reportage lacks cohesion in presentation, because it focuses too much on images and "on-the-spot" feeds. Leaves something for print to do.