The Indian media and the emergence of the internet

Kushan Mitra, Assistant Editor, Business Today
Will the Indian media be changed forever by the emergence of the internet? Some people certainly think so. Well, I think way too many people think so. Don't get me wrong, while I believe the internet will change the way people consume information in India as it has across the rest of the world, I don't think this change is happening right now.

Let me explain why? There is too little content online, while there have been some interesting and good websites created, particularly in technology, telecom and news. But too many sites are doing little else but rehashing the same PTI news story, yes they might wrap it inside web 2.0 technologies with scrollovers and drop-downs, but I get the same thing everywhere. There are far too few sites providing original and interesting content. I am not saying that there are none, there are just too few.

There are a couple of reasons for this, the first and major reason is not for a lack of trying. Most major media houses have spent considerable amounts of money and dedicated a lot of resources online. However, what you see online is mostly rehashed agency copy. Therefore traveling from major news site to major news site, you see the same news, albeit packaged in a different way. Some sites have tried packaging the content they get from their in-house resources, but very little gets highlighted.

As I mentioned, the problem is not one of buying technology, most many news sites are extremely difficult for search-engine crawlers to index. Looking for a piece that was printed in today morning’s paper? It is often next to impossible to find it, unless it was either a front page story or something the paper wants to promote. Sometimes the easiest way of sending a link to a story is by searching the concerned newspaper or magazine's e-offering and getting a 'mail to friend' link.

The other problem is more fundamental, and that is a lack of understanding of the medium by a large number of the current generation of journalists. 'Sure, the internet is a great place to find porn, but why should I write there?', seems to be the prevailing philosophy. Many of my peers, and I must admit, at a level even myself treat ourselves primarily as print or television journalists and the internet is a poor cousin. Many journalists openly revolt against being made to write 'web stories' and several other stories that do go online are those deemed not newsworthy enough to be printed.

The fact of the matter is that in countries where the web has become the dominant medium of information transmission, journalists have begun to understand the options that the internet affords them. Nobody remains purely a television journalist or purely a print journalist, with the ability to weave several facets into one story, a print journalist can fill in a story with video and audio while a TV journalist can write a long feature passage.

The reason for the dichotomy often is in the management structure of media companies in India. While many of them have invested heavily in the internet, most internet operations are run as separate outfits and there is no unified structure. Sure, exclusives do get a play online, but rarely with additional content. What about the 'out-takes' from a video interview or maybe even a podcast of the interview? Content is already recorded on the digital medium, putting it online is not rocket science. What about a reporter filling in details on how he or she got that story?

While I loathe to blow my own trumpet, I think my employers are doing a smart thing. At India Today Group, we have recently started our new Digital ventures under India Today Group Digital (ITGD). While the first mission of ITGD was to get drastically spruce up our moribund websites which it has done. We are now beginning to play with new ideas. One reason I believe we have been able to do some innovative things is because we have tried to address the dichotomy because the boss of the Digital venture continues to be my editor at Business Today. I will not say that all my colleagues have a great understanding of the internet and the challenges that it poses to them in the future, but I would say that they are better off than the resident editor of a left-leaning paper who once said that they should steer clear of RSS because it could be 'misinterpreted'. This is a true incident.

But why do I say challenges for journalists? In the west, the internet is already becoming a major news distribution medium. My main source for technology news are the blogs Gizmodo and Engadget. In several other niche areas, the internet is by far and away the dominant information medium. Blog journalists, and they are journalists, are treated at par with print and TV journalists. In fact, the internet can open up new vistas for stories and areas that sometimes don't get covered might find a whole new audience online. Stories on rural India for example. Where the mainstream media has failed, or rather been apathetic, online media can fill that gap.

But to make sure you don't become redundant in an age of the internet, one will have to understand the challenges of the internet, primarily monetization but also its opportunities. The problem is that few media schools are teaching the requisite multi-media skills required for this. Technologies like those being developed by cellular handset companies will allow instantaneous transmission of video from a mobile device straight onto a company's server or maybe even onto live TV or live webcast. Will this make the cameraman redundant, maybe not right now, but who knows what might happen?

I do not believe that 'Citizen Journalism' will be the killer of big media. The role of citizen networks, which could range from Twitter to Blogs, in spreading information will grow, but any large news distribution website will require editorial direction and unstructured news or video, while amusing and occasionally informative will not kill traditional news gathering or reporting. We could well see a Huffington Post sort of site in India in the near future, but editorial direction is crucial. I don't think I would be too far off the mark when I comment that editorial direction and control has been ripped asunder at certain popular news channels.