Saying it all, briefly

In newspapers, "middles" provide a relief of sorts from the incessantly somber intellectual analytical articles that make things insufferably serious for most of us who would like to have a glimpse of the lighter side of life. Worse, most of the stuff is seldom less than thousand words long and looks longer to the unsuspecting, uninitiated reader who, perchance, happens to go through it. So, the clever op-ed editors use middles in the same manner as Bollywood movies of yore had used comic interludes to keep the viewers interested in the teary saga of tragedy queens and kings.

Holypol; Rajbir Deswal
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The fact that these are strategically placed between the main opinion article and the Letters to the Editor column, with edits on the left, tells you something about the importance of middles in the popularity stakes. Therefore, a middle writer has to be adept at conveying his thoughts in a few words in the most attractive manner. No wonder, writing middles is considered an art that requires a certain attitude: one has to be an expert in brevity. Of course, brevity could be the Shakespearean "soul of wit" or the less demanding but equally alluring—what the late US writer Dorothy Parker had described as—"soul of lingerie".

Full report here Tribune

WSJ launches Hindi blog

The Wall Street Journal India has launched a Hindi blog, called India Real Time Hindi, which offers consumers commentary – quick analysis and insight – on developments related to politics, business, sports, Bollywood in India. The WSJ does have an English blog of the same name, but the content doesn’t appear to overlap. Some stories – like this one on Rahul Gandhi is a translation of the English post, but much of the content is unique to each blog. WSJ has national language versions of its Real Time blogs for its corresponding China and Japan focused blogs as well.

It will be interesting to see how content consumption patterns on IRT Hindi evolves. For WSJ, it will initially serve as an experiment into understanding the Indic language consumption patterns, and their access to quality writers and content would serve them well. I wonder if they have plans for other Indian languages as well.

While there isn’t lack of Indic language content on the web, it’s discovery can be a bit of an issue. Thankfully, WSJ doesn’t appear to be just publishing or repurposing wire content, but going the blog way, with opinion.

Full report here Medianama

Increasingly literate India fuels newspaper boom

When India hosted the World Newspaper Congress last year, Indian editors and owners were a conspicuously cheerful minority at a gathering dominated by doubts over the future of newsprint.

While many papers in industrialised nations have been laying off staff or folding in the face of freefalling circulation figures and competition from Internet news and television, the printed press in India is booming.
A fast-expanding economy, mushrooming advertising budgets, rising disposable income and, above all, increasing literacy rates have fuelled a newspaper renaissance, with new titles and fatter editions appearing by the month.

Since 2005 the number of paid-for daily newspaper titles in India has grown by 44 percent to 2,700, according to the "World Press Trends 2010" survey published by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN-IFRA). That makes it the world leader ahead of the United States with 1,397 titles and China with 1,000. India also has the world's highest paid-for daily circulation, having surpassed China for the first time in 2008.


"What we have is education levels and purchasing power improving -- there's a hunger among Indians to know," Bhaskar Rao, director of New Delhi's Centre for Media Studies, told AFP. Even with 125 million households owning a television, "TV only seems to serve as an appetizer -- after watching the evening news they want to read more about the stories the next day," Rao said. Indian newspapers are also incredibly cheap, with revenue driven by advertising rather than sales.

Most have a cover price of less than four rupees (eight US cents), allowing many households to subscribe to more than one daily.


Full report here AFP

Small-town tales

Nitin Vaidya, COO, Zee Entertainment Enterprises and business head, Zee TV, recalled something lyricist Javed Akhtar had once related during a FICCI Frames speech. Some years ago, a television channel was presented with a story for programming consideration, and the person who had submitted the story was asked who the writer was. Munshi Premchand, he said, and was promptly asked to bring the writer to the channel's office!

That's over the top, you might say, but it does point to a fact that television's general entertainment channels  (GECs) are honestly admitting today.

As Uday Shankar, CEO, Star India, described it: "The winds of change blowing across the new India are lateral and multilayered and you can no longer be sitting in Mumbai and deciding 'this is what India looks like' in the stories that you tell on television. The entertainment operator has to reset his perspective to current Indian reality."

As the demography of television gets more heterogeneous, he added, middle and small town India are where the viewership volumes are coming from. "The hunger of the new, more aspirational, more assertive consumer is a lot more prominent there."

Full report here Hindustan Times

For a rich, ethnically diverse media landscape

Demographic indicators all point to ethnic media remaining important and viable in the future, as declining birth rates in Western countries continue to encourage immigration to satisfy demand for workers, postulates ‘Understanding Ethnic Media’ by Matthew D. Matsaganis, Vikki S. Katz, and Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach (www.sagepublications.com). Ethnic media provide new immigrants with content that connects them to their country of origin, and also with content that orients them to their new communities in ways that can encourage settlement, the authors aver.

They define ethnic media as media that are produced by and for (a) immigrants, (b) racial, ethnic, and linguistic minorities, as well as (c) indigenous populations living across different countries. Examples cited in the opening chapter include ‘The Haitian Times,’ a newspaper published in New York, for the 2 lakh Haitians there; ‘Korea Times,’ reaching many places in the US; ‘Antenna Satellite’ targeting Greeks in the US and Canada; ‘SAT-7’ with Arab audience across the Middle East and North Africa; and ‘TVBS-Europe,’ a Chinese satellite network that covers many European countries.

Full report here Hindu