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WEB JOURNALISM IN INDIA: HISTORY
BEING AN unavoidable universal rule, change does not spare media
too. Earlier, the two main sources of news were the newspaper and
the radio. A majority of the people opined at the time that web
journalism would relegate other forms of media to history. The FM
system (used for broadcasting radio programmes) revolutionised the
radio and simultaneously, newer editions and newer versions of the
newspaper arrived.
Web journalism entered India about ten years ago. Initially, it had to
cope with the pressures posed by the post-liberalisation era. The
deteriorating plight of web journalism led one to question its very
survival. But some companies decided to stick it out, come rain or
shine and availed, during the period 2000 - 2002, the services
provided by the search engines like Google.
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With increased use of computers and broadband, web journalism has
grown by leaps and bounds. Those who cannot access television,
radio and newspapers, keep themselves updated through the e-
editions of newspapers. With increase in mobile services, which
provides connectivity to the Internet through GPRS, the role of web
journalism has become significant. Although the country has to
overcome the barriers posed by inadequate and poor quality power,
high rentals associated with broadband services, the low-cost
computers have supported the dissemination of Internet-based news.
A laptop is now cheaper than a desktop!
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Online journalism in India continues to be dominated by the traditional
media, which not only generates news but also shapes the online
perspectives. The heartening feature is the effort of New Media to
carve an identity for itself. Most would dismiss these efforts as too
small, and too limited. But the truth is that the online media continues
to experiment in its brave effort to develop a new news model, using
the tools that technology has placed at its command.
The Indian media sites that are in the forefront of this revolution are
Thetimesofindia.com, Hindustantimes.com, Indianexpress.com and
the Newindpress.com. There are also two pure play players which
have made their presence felt. These are Rediff.com and Sify.com.
Interestingly, the two Indian news agencies, Press Trust of India and
United News of India, too have set up websites though they seem to
be wary of putting all their stories on the net.
Today, however the sites want the traffic to flow from within India. But
this is not happening, at least not in the numbers that the advertisers
want. The result is that media sites are still not a favoured property as
far as the Indian advertisers are concerned. Their reluctance to
include New Media in their campaign plans means less revenue for
media sites, and more dependence on parent companies.
The arrival of broadband, and the hype about wireless access, has
raised hopes in most New Media newsrooms. Adding to the optimism
is the continued drop in the prices of computers, and the launch of
Internet in Class C and D towns. There is a sense of anticipation, and
excitement. Everyone realizes that the real battle is round the corner.
However, for the time being, the online media continues to live in the
shadows of the traditional media. Three quarters of content on any
newspaper site is content generated for, and used by, newspapers.
The remaining quarter is content that has been sourced from news
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agencies. This content is fresh, and is used to update the breaking
news section.
In fact, the media sites would look stale and old without agency feed.
All of them use PTI and UNI and their international feeds to run
breaking news, and bring freshness to their home pages. But this
also makes them faceless, when it comes to breaking news. A user
finds the same story on the home page of all Indian news sites. It’s
only in the night that the news sites redo the home pages to include
special and exclusive stories generated by their print teams.
One area where media sites have broken away from traditional media
is news selection. The media sites focus more on people, crime,
fashion, entertainment, sports, and human interest stories. They also
play up stories that are likely to interest NRIs. There is a clear move
away from political stories, and the shenanigans of politicians, which
forms the bulk of newspaper content.
The news mix has been arrived at after studying the log files. These
files indicate which stories are being read most. Interestingly, the
verdict is the same: online readers are not interested in what the
politicians are saying.
Another interesting trend is the hunger for news from smaller districts.
This is especially evident on the sites of language newspapers. For
instance, readers of Kannadaprabha.com, the website of Kannada
Prabha, want to read more and more news from Shimoga, Belgaum,
Hubli, Madikeri or Mysore. The same is true of readers visiting
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Dinamani.com. They want to read reports emanating from Salem,
Erode, Madurai, Tirupur and Tirunelveli.
This shows the reach of the net, and the way it is redefining news
value. Most of these news reports would not be published in the
Chennai edition of Dinamani or the Bangalore edition of Kanada
Prabha, because these areas are beyond the distribution basin of
these newspapers. These media sites are now learning that no news
report is insignificant, a fact that is vividly reflected on their home
pages in the form of space allocated to news reports from districts.
The media sites may be basking in the glory of increased traffic but
they are still reluctant to charge for content. The
newspapertoday.com, which had introduced a subscription fee in the
heady days of the net, had closed shop soon after. The other media
sites don’t want to go the same way. That is why they continue to
provide news content for free.
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What is interesting is the flexing of muscles by news agencies. Both
PTI and UNI were quiet for a long time. Their content was being used
freely on the net by media sites. Now, PTI has served a notice on
newspapers asking them to pay for the text and photographs that are
being used on the web. UNI, in fact, was the first agency to move
such a notice in 2000. However, it never followed up on aggressively
on it. The wire service bills are bound to increase the costs of web
operations, though for agencies they will prove a valuable source of
income.
One area where the Indian news sites have moved ahead is
technology. The days of static HTML-based sites, where six to seven
stories were crammed in a single page, are over. Even the age of
ASP or active server pages is over. The sites today have either
moved or are in the process of moving to the more dynamic and
useful XML pages, like the rest of the world.
The site speeds too have gone up. Most newspapers are now using
multiple servers with high processing power to serve pages. Earlier,
these servers were located primarily in the US. Now, Indian sites
have started hosting content on servers based in India. This has
improved the experience of the Indian surfer too because he spends
less time in opening pages. An added advantage is the stemming of
dollar outgo. Earlier, all media sites were paying huge sums in
dollars. Now, they are paying in rupees to Indian companies.
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E-PAPER
E-paper is another fine innovation. The Times of India was the first to
host an e-paper. It was followed by the Hindustan Times, Deccan
Chronicle, Vijay Times and Vijay Karnataka. The e-paper is an
advancement of the pdf newspaper, in which the newspaper was
hosted in the pdf format. This format was quite cumbersome and
tedious, and the reader had to struggle to locate stories of interest.
But there are many areas where the Indian sites have not kept pace
with their western counterparts. Blogging is one key area. The Times
of India is the only news site that has its own blogging section; the
Hindustan Times is using blogging software provided by
Sulekha.com; the remaining media sites are yet to set up their
blogging software. Once again, it is Rediff.com and Sify.com that
have taken a lead on their media counterparts. Both these sites
provide blogging as a useful interactive interface on their sites.
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mobile content is not an important part of New Media. Every major
telecom operator has tied up with content providers to provide
breaking news. However, from the media point of view the mobile
foray is largely limited to these three sites. The other media houses
are yet to wake up to the full potential of mobile content.
CITIZEN JOURNALISM
Another area where Indian sites need to catch up is in the area of
citizen journalism. The net today provides the possibility of involving
ordinary citizens in the news creation process. A few American
newspapers are experimenting with the idea. They have created
sections on their sites where the citizens can report news
developments. This facility is more than blogs, which are like
personal diaries on the net. A few newspapers publish selected
postings after careful vetting. Indian newspapers too are looking at
the idea of citizen journalism with interest, but are yet to take any
concrete steps in this regard.
REVENUE GENERATION
A hobbling reality for Indian sites is lack of revenue. Almost every site
is struggling to generate revenue. The irony is that this is not the
classic vicious circle where revenue generation is directly dependent
on the number of readers. The number of unique visitors grows every
day – and with it the attendant costs of server upgrades – but the
advertiser refuses to embrace the net.
The few advertisers who use the Indian media sites insist on
performance advertising. They want to pay for actual sales or on
leads generated by a campaign. For instance, a couple of banks who
advertise on the net pay Rs 150 for every form that is filled by a
prospective-NRI customer. This means that a site that has served
100,000 advertisements may earn only Rs 1500 at the end of the
month if the campaign has generated only ten leads.
The pay for clicks or CTR (clickthrough) campaigns are even more
exploitative. The advertiser pays only for the number of times a
customer has clicked on the advertisements. Since the clickthrough
rate varies from a low of 0.1 per cent to a high of 0.3 per cent, it
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means that a website will earn money for only three of the ten
banners that it has served for a high performing campaign. In
contrast, a newspaper or television advertisement is based on the
reach of the media vehicle, not on the ad results.
The media sites therefore have started looking beyond the traditional
revenue sources. Indiatimes is the torchbearer in this regard, and is
followed by Hindustan Times and the New Indian Express. Some of
the revenue streams that have been developed are: e-commerce,
mobile content, job portals, money transfer, website development,
auctions etc.
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shopping environment. Rediff.com additionally offers the Indian
American community one of the oldest and largest Indian weekly
newspapers, India Abroad.Founded in 1996, Rediff.com is
headquartered in Mumbai, India with offices in New Delhi, Bangalore,
Chennai, Hyderabad and New York, USA.
Rediff news is the most hit website which is used for reading news on
the internet. Most of the email users while visiting the web page visit
the news section often. The best part is that the website has made a
separate section for the news and has hired a number of people to
deal with the information flow.
THE TEAM
The team of the rediff news section comprises of one editor in chief
with four associate editors, reporters in major metros 12 nos. and two
researchers. Presently R. UNNIKRISHNAN is heading the news
section. The team takes news from various sources as well as their
reporters sends them the news briefs from various cities.
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The Rediff.com India website consists of information, communication
and content services, free and paid community features and
products, including e-commerce and mobile services.
CONCLUSION
Web space is the future of fastest and most reach news medium. Its
use is being increasing day by day. Web hosting is inevitable
nowadays and daily more and more computers are getting attached
with the vast and ever increasing space on the web domain.
In the present scenario when everybody is short of time, getting news
on their computer screens is what created a stir & it’s the main
reason why hits on news based websites is increasing day by day.
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More and more people are turning towards this spider web for
quenching their thirst for breaking news.
The web news medium does not need a battalion of reporters and
people to work in. Mostly news based websites are the exact version
of their print edition newspapers. The organizational structure is not
the same as the one needed for any other media organisation. In
most of the news based websites there is a team of only 2 to 3
people.
If the person is techno savvy and hanging on around the internet and
computers is the hobby and with a news sense than this could turn
into an exciting career opportunity also.
WWW.MERINEWS.COM
WWW.REDIFF.COM
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WWW.OJR.COM
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