Being Pro-Hindi is being Pro-masses

Only 12-15% of Indians speak English. The remaining speak Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Bengali and so on. Those who speak English also almost invariably speak one of the other native languages. Govt is of the people, by the people, for the people. Is the central Govt for 15% of English speaking or for the remaining 85% too? If yes then it must speak their language. Govt must communicate to citizen in their language, which will be Hindi in UP, Tamil and TN, Bengali in WB and so on. Some people are calling being pro-Hindi as being anti-masses. How strange can that be? Being pro-Hindi is certainly being pro-masses.

For years elitists have been taking undue advantage of their English proficiency. Modi wants to communicate to the citizen in Hindi. What’s wrong with that? When congress politician went to public to ask for votes a few months back – did they give their speeches in English in Amethi and Rai Bareli? There are people who fear that being pro-Hindi means being anti-Tamil. I am sure Modi understands that all Indian languages and their practitioners have equal rights and there can’t be a linguistic prejudice – neither pro-English nor pro-Hindi.

India is a large multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-lingual country. We take pride in our diversity. Being a Hindi speaking Indian, I have equal right to Govt information and services, education and do business for gain as much as an English speaking person does. Why should then Govt information and services be available only in English. It must be available in Hindi, Tamil and Bengali too. In a democracy, I must be able to lead a life of pride, dignity and gain irrespective of my choice of language.

Internet is a great democratization force. It makes the same information and knowledge accessible to all. However, IT and Internet have left large percentage of Indian masses untouched. They call it the Digital Divide; it is in fact a “Linguistic Digital Divide” because you are disadvantaged primarily because information is available only in English. It’s Modi’s responsibility to make Internet democratic in this country by bringing in enabling measures to make all information and knowledge, specially in the Govt and education space, available in Indian languages. This will empower the citizen, they’ll be able to make informed decisions and lead a life of dignity and equality.

What If.....

This post is by guest blogger Vidushi Kapoor, the newest addition to the Process Nine family. 

Having spent some time reading about the speed and velocity of the newspaper industry, I sat and wondered what ‘the future of newspapers’ could look like. Since I am (thankfully) not in a news organization right now, the immediate fears of losing revenue (and my job) are not haunting me, which gives me the privilege to skip the immediate fire fighting and let my imagination run wild!

Let’s look at our Demand/ Supply scenarios:

Demand: It can be safely said that in the next 10-15 years, almost everyone who can and wants to read, should be able to view news online – i.e. they should be able to survive without a news‘paper’.

Supply: Every newspaper is going digital, not because it’s a cool thing to do, but because it’s the only thing to do if they want to survive. Hence, I don’t think I’ll be way off the mark if I say that the next 15 years will see every newspaper that survives having some digital presence.

Where will these curves meet? What would be the equilibrium?

Here’s my take. It has many assumptions that may never hold true, but then again, this post isn’t going for the next Nobel!

Historically, the reason we had so many newspapers is:

Geographical Barriers

• I can’t have a newspaper flown from Japan and Canada for me everyday unless I have an unlimited supply of money (which most people don’t)
• Even if I can manage to source newspapers from across the world (say, by having excellent contacts at the international airport), I will not be as interested to read about a city where I have never gone and may never go; or about affairs that don’t directly affect me. There would also be the language issue.

Content & Presentation
Whether it’s a journalist who provides facts for what they are, without his opinion, or for columnists who give out radical opinions, or simply for the jokes and cartoon strips, newspapers create ‘product differentiation’ through content and presentation when competing directly in a geographical location.
This is the biggest focus of organizations today when developing websites and apps - content, images, presentation and UX.

Language
One publication house in India can publish upto six newspapers, with more or less the same content, but in a different language. Nuff said.

If we come back to our assumptions of the ‘future’, the pillar of geographical barriers would fall. One could easily access news from any part of the world and opine on it. If Twitter is abuzz with the latest comment from Madonna, I should as well participate and ‘be included’ – it really costs nothing!

(I will, at this point, make a quick assumption that “the pay wall will fall” – which many today will disagree with, and they may just be right. However, I feel that as long as we have a 100 different newspapers with very similar content to choose from, competition will drive the vanilla pay wall down. This of course also assumes that the quality of content will converge across news publications.)

 As it comes to content and presentation, I agree that for a few years, all major newspapers will invest heavily in creating the best UI and UX for their subscribers and attracting maximum footfall to earn through pay walls and ads.

However, with time and technological advancements, news apps and websites will begin to look like each other and the lines of content differentiation will blur. (Hint – think how iOS and Android seem to be increasingly mirroring each other with every newer version released)

Hence, even though differentiation will exist in theory, it will not be as strong a force of attraction as is touted today.

Well then, what happens next?

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario:

All the newspapers of a country come under two (max 3) umbrellas: NewsOrg A and NewsOrg B. They will operate by publishing National News, World News, and then begin to localize news to every town and district of the country (hyper-localization). There will, in effect be an ‘integration and differentiation’ effect that will arise due to excessive competition and falling margins.

Other ‘publications’ that should thrive would be specialized and niche, e.g. ones dealing only with sports, or technology or medicine. Readers would subscribe to them similar to joining interest groups on all major social networking websites.

Where does this leave us?

•  Lesser players giving out the same (or maybe more) information by achieving efficiencies of scale
• Users will have ample option for personalization (selecting news from India, then only Bangalore, besides Bollywood and Mobile Technology)
• Advertising will be more targeted, hence ad revenues should rise
• With increased personalization, pay walls for niche content may start making sense again

What the future holds is of course a mystery (except for the inventers of the much awaited time machine), but our present undoubtedly is witnessing a massive change, and the times are truly exciting!

Vidushi Kapoor

Mobile News 2.0

(photos courtesy atelier.net and vipinfo.hu)

Mobile news started with media companies publishing mobile compatible sites on WAP. The brief was to help users browse news on their then small mobile screens in a compact view. It generated initial curiosity but did not become very popular. 

Soon came Blackberry and iPhone and other smartphone OSs and the “Mobile App Era” dawned. News publishers started pushing their print, TV and online news content to mobile/tablet devices with little or no repurposing. The content was usually streamed as RSS feed for display in an app. The publisher’s intent, by and large, was to make the news available through yet another media. Through these apps, publishers wanted to create a presence, hoped to get a foothold and capture the viewer’s attention on the move.

Early news apps created some curiosity. Viewers attempted to pay attention; attempted to get hooked on to good apps; some of them found it useful since it kept them informed while on the move; but not many viewers really got excited. This was the period when people were getting used to smartphones and tablets and just about starting to use their devices beyond making calls, share messages and emails and do some quick internet browsing. 

Smart devices today are being used to occasionally get news snippets, updates on important events, breaking news, sports scores etc. They have not posed a serious threat to the print or TV media and much less to the online news media. Users and publishers are still unable differentiate much between online and mobile news media.

Mobile is becoming an exciting and dynamic space, moving at the speed of thought. It’s also scary because it disrupts the status quo and does not give us much time to react. Those who ride this wave will have fun, but also run the risk of getting hurt in the process. However, those who don’t accept and acknowledge this change quickly will not get the opportunity to lead the next version of Mobile News. 

Come 2014 and it’s time to build upon the experience of last few years of online and mobile apps. The state of the market has changed-

1. Viewers have realized the great potential of mobile devices
2. Devices are becoming more capable by the day
3. Smartphones and tablets with new versions of iOS, Android and Windows OSs are becoming a real option for the masses
4. Internet speeds are increasing. Cost of bandwidth is going down. Internet is available almost everywhere.
5. Every adult and a teenager will soon carry a connected smart device at all times
6. Social media has changed the world
7. News consumption habits have undergone a generation shift

 Mobile News 2.0 will establish Mobile as a serious major for news. News organizations will need to make substantial investments of intent, time and money to attract and retain viewers. Mobile News will become a serious revenue opportunity in large parts of the world. Many players will vie for this market place – legacy media organizations, technology companies, innovators, fly-by-night operators and money bags. All disruptions bring forth opportunities that can be capitalized. Little investment can bring big returns if your ideas click. On the other hand, often the smartest and the biggest players may read the opportunity wrong and can make big and costly mistakes. To earn serious mobile revenue, the minimum requirement will be to get your newsroom team to focus on this medium. In this generation, if you do not publish content specifically targeted at mobile users, you’re unlikely to find much success. 

A generation in Mobile News apps is expected to have a span of 3 years. While I am offering a few leads to the things that we expect to see in the next few months, I am expecting to see some real quantum jumps or some really new directions.

1. Mobile first publishing
2. Rich content and presentation
3. Interactivity; newer ways of interactivity
4. Personalization
5. Go Local
6. Convergence of online, apps and social media
7. Sharing
8. Experiments with journalism
9. Experiments with syndication
10. New ways to monetize the content
11. New measurements of popularity
12. New ways of targeting
13. New ways of advertising/promotion
14. Virtual reality
15. News to Knowledge
16. News to Action

I invite you to share your views on what Mobile News 2.0 will look like. Over the next month or two, I intend to dive deeper into each of these directions and others added by you and hope that you’ll join me in this journey. 


Rakesh Kapoor