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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Media | The year the news was in the news
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Media | The year the news was in the news

The trend is likely to continue in the new year unless we introspect on ownership models, ethics and governance

Imaging by: Jayachandran & Manoj Madhavan/MintPremium
Imaging by: Jayachandran & Manoj Madhavan/Mint

Indian media didn’t lose its way in 2013—that happened sometime back—but it ended the year no closer to finding answers to existential questions about ethics, governance, ownership, and business models.

In Chennai, the Kasturi family that has always given the impression that it believes all desirable journalistic qualities are embedded in one closed genetic pool, fired The Hindu’s first non-family editor, Siddharth Varadarajan, who had managed to liven up a dense, albeit cerebral offering.

The Kolkata-based proprietor of Open magazine, Sanjiv Goenka, famous for going on stage and singing a Bengali song to please the state’s chief minister, fired his political editor because said editor’s writings were presumably making several politicians across the spectrum uncomfortable.

The India Today group, in which the Aditya Vikram Birla Group acquired a significant stake last year, blanked out some not-so-nice news about the group’s chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla.

The TV18 group seemed to acquire a new political orientation that reflected that of its new owner, Reliance Industries Ltd.

As of this writing, Tarun Tejpal, the editor and part-owner of Tehelka, a magazine that many saw as the quintessential anti-establishment publication, was in a Goa jail facing charges that he sexually assaulted one of his employees (and the magazine itself looks set to implode, with its managing editor too leaving).

Outlook Publishing (India) Pvt. Ltd stopped publishing the local editions of three international magazines, and fired 120 people. The TV18 group restructured its operations and 300-400 people, including the chief executive of two of its channels, lost their jobs. Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd ceased publication of its weekend paper Crest, although no one lost their job. Business Standard sold BS Motoring to Delhi Press. The ABP Group sold Businessworld to Exchange4media founder Anurag Batra and some others. Indian media companies and groups made a lot of noise about, and some investments in, the digital space.

Elsewhere, journalists got spellings and facts wrong, messed up math as only journalists can, happily peddled the propaganda of their political and business masters, even resorted to stings and blackmail to make a quick buck—for themselves as well as their employees.

A journalist at the Ghaziabad bureau of a Hindi daily, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed that his bureau chief had a “revenue target". The businessman-owner of two successful regional language channels, again speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was horrified when his deputy editor came to him and offered to “make 40 crore for the company", all in cash (which means unaccounted money), from candidates contesting the elections—by blackmailing them.

There are many other examples, but everything points to three questions that we are no closer to answering at the end of 2013 than we were at the beginning of the year.

1. What is the best ownership structure for media companies?

2. What is the best business model for media companies?

3. What is the best regulatory structure for media companies?

The Guardian, a paper that is universally respected and admired, is owned by a trust, but not all Indian newspapers, channels and websites have that luxury. Some are privately owned by families or individuals or business groups—which means they are not vulnerable to the demands of the stock market, although they may well be driven by the whims and interests of their owners. Others are listed on the stock market, and rated quarter on unforgiving quarter by analysts, but the public ownership also makes them, by and large, better governed and transparent. Some are large, making the stakes that much higher for them, but they can also better withstand pressure from politicians and large business houses about what to run and what not to. Others are small, and independent, but the consequent struggle for survival makes many of them do things they wouldn’t have liked to.

The issue of ownership is also related to the one on how media companies make money. In a country like India, where people have been conditioned to pay nothing, or very little, for content, media companies are overwhelmingly dependent on advertising and advertisers—so much so that some media companies have lost sight of their original lofty objectives and now merely exist to link audiences and advertisers. With news becoming all about audiences, it isn’t surprising that some companies have resorted to packaging ads as news.

Digital or online advertising accounts for 10-15% of all advertising depending on who you talk to, and that proportion will only increase. So if they are to stay relevant, media companies will have to ensure that 10-15% of their revenue comes from their digital operations. For most large media companies, the proportion is much lower, around 5-7%. And few are making the kind of investments required to grow this share.

The writers do not have a personal preference when it comes to structure—each has its merits—although we do believe that a media company should focus on profits (after all, they fund the business, help it grow, and also provide a return to shareholders who put up the risk capital) without profiteering. We also believe media companies should address the imbalance between the revenue they get by selling content and that they do by providing audiences. This may mean higher cover prices, cable fees, and pay-walls. India has close to 200 million Internet users according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Even discounting that number by half, to remove those users who access limited online services such as Facebook on their so-called feature (or non-smart) phones, and the result by another half to exclude irregular users, means India has 50 million “real" Internet users. Surely, some proportion of that will pay for content.

The issue of governance is more complex. Self-regulation is desirable, but it hasn’t worked; the government can’t govern itself so it would be too much to expect it to govern media; and the country’s experience with independent regulators, across sectors, has been inconsistent. For every example of a newspaper or TV channel that governs itself admirably—we’d like to think Mint is one such—there are 10 that do not. The solution may be a new law, but one that is carefully crafted and balances all interests and has enough safeguards to prevent misuse (while on the subject of law, we’d also like India to scrap criminal defamation).

Unless, or till these three issues are addressed, we are likely to see more news about the news in 2014 as well.

Still, 2013 had one very bright spot as far as the media was concerned—it finally started covering itself.

R. Sukumar saw the Greater White-fronted Goose this year.

Shuchi Bansal lived with giant spiders and glow-worms in her timber cottage in the hills this summer.

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Published: 28 Dec 2013, 01:45 AM IST
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