Wednesday, June 04, 2014

The Newspaper is dead, Long live the 'New' Social-e-Paper

Blog gist: In the technology driven, Information anywhere world, newspapers need to reinvent how they communicate, focus on new concepts, (drop the 'Know your English' mentality) and time is an essence - tell the story real quick - just don't be a Modi basher and learn it from Rajnikanth's Kochadiiyan. psst: who are the two anchors who have resigned/gone on a month unpaid holiday!!

Now over to the full story:
The Hindu newspaper was a precious commodity at our house. The head of the family had his first rights to the paper - After a customary glance through news and other sections, the paper would be neatly folded back and on its place fresh. Then the elder brother ran through the sports pages and back in its fold.

Being the last in pecking order not only for the family but to The Hindu as well. I started reading The Hindu when I was 8 or 9.  Typically the interest started from the reverse sections of the paper - sports pages. Then moved on to 'This day that age', S&T, Tuesday's Know Your English, Friday's Entertainment, Sunday Magazines and I finally grew up to reading the political sections. By the time I started reading the editorial, lead or open column I would have been probably 17.Retaining the fresh look and returning to its folds took me years to learn. I used to be awed by how my father could read it even in a windy bus drive and retain its fold. 

There was a brand to The Hindu, a societal elitist look on you if you were known to be an avid reader. Whereas some of my father's friends read a dusty Indian Express who would frown upon, but still secretly look up to The Hindu reader's for its English panache.

Fast forward 20 years: I am not an avid reader of The Hindu anymore. Profession facilitating travel around the globe led to reading The Washington Post, Financial Times, The New York Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent and recently The Daily Sabah too. But to be honest, I have stopped reading these papers and use technology to bespoke relevant news as a summary.

In addition I have a set of blogs and also Apps that filters and gives me the essence. As if this is not enough, I have my own sources of "grapevine providers" So you can say I am actually a news-junkie and not only that, you can also say I am a new world order- Fast News Junkie.  (like a fast food junkie) and I don't have time!

This morning I decided to take it to the 1990s style and woke up with e-Hindu. I read a good write up from by Shiv Visvanathan. After many years, If anything hasn't changed it is The Hindu. Apart from a short-period of their interesting ads and their bold take on to the TOI plus a few aesthetic bits, nothing has changed fundamentally. Hope my above write-up gives them a dose of what is already happening to the "Media" and what is more to come.

I actually wanted to write a "closed" letter to Mr Shiv Visvanathan. But why not make it a bit more interesting with my own view of The Hindu and use his article as a means. I used a summariser app and the gist provided by an app: 

  1. Acting as the vector of a new generation, Mr. Modi decimated the Congress.
  2. Watching the rituals of Delhi one senses, first, signs of doubt, about the paucity of new ideas.
  3. In this scenario, Mr. Modi as the new Patel rules instead of an adolescent Nehru (Rahul Gandhi) but the categories are not different
In less than a fortnight this gentleman has passed on the verdict. However in order to pass his views, he has used language to his best use. "If one looks at it starkly, India stands between a desiccated left and an inflated right. Yet, one stands at a time when the left and the right as ideologies or problem-solving solutions are outdated. The nature of history has changed and Mr. Modi’s moves look outdated." 

So let me say through the closed letter to Shiv, that this blog is not about Modi or defending his nascent government. It is about highlighting that Shiv's profession may be teaching, but his pastime of writing articles in newspapers is under threat.

"The News Paper is dead, Long Live the social-e-paper!"  If he looks abstemiously in to my above write-up this will be clear.

  1. Those days of long winded flowering articles are fading. Like the Cricket Test matches, they may provide a platform to enjoy the technique of writing, but IPL has come to stay - so a new social news order has come to stay.
  2. The ideology of left vs. right has been dead with Cold War v1.0 and the v2.0 is about capitalism and naked truth is nothing but that. Even though left had a presence in India, contrary to popular belief India has never (in my opinion) understood either left or right wing politics - Simply because those models have never been described by any statesman or proponent to India and its polity. There were some notable names, but these Models were never explored even as a proof of concept, let alone an actual implementation. 
He then goes on to discuss the problems in a set of 3 triangles - The first triangle (allegedly inspired by French Revolution - which is the need for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity), Second triangle (Industrial - Productivity, growth and efficiency), but instead of projecting the third problem, he says it is the third solution!!! Which is Uniformity, Governance and Security.

So for the above problems or the needs, he outlines three solutions

  1. A Social Contract  which brings Nature and Ways of livelihoods
  2. Democracy as electoralism must go instead should be seen as plurality
  3. Technology blend of culture into a cultic religion: Technocratic-fundamentalism
Unfortunately my summariser app has chosen to omit his above "innovative" thinking altogether.

  1. People across the globe largely have moved to left-centre or right-centre. So he has decided to bring new concepts which make little sense to me, if in fact he has really found some new concepts, then he should work hard to share  them much more succinctly.
  2. Like the politics, Media is also changing, the news consumption is changing.
I see three problems here and let me explain using Venn diagrams. Even though Shiv talked about three triangles and forgot to mention one, I am going to use Venn's Circles.

So the first set is whether one wishes or not, technology has changed the world and will go on changing it as it did in the Mechanical and Computing Industrial revolutions. The new world order of "social media" has arrived. 

The second circle that cuts into first circle is, the way people consume news, consume information and more importantly the way people will analyse news means the Media outlets have to work hard in bringing out "quality debates" - they have a choice of a) run a 24x7 news channel that has a set of anchors shouting at 9PM every day or b) to bring new world-order news consumption techniques.(grapevine: and as I write this, I hear two lead-anchors have resigned from CNN-IBN nothing to do with their "high pitch debates" - they have apparently gone to a month unpaid holiday)  

Three, sorry unlike Shiv I don't see a third problem Grrr. (Mixing humor, so keeping my reader's attention) Actually the third problem is we don't have time, so make your point very quickly or pitch a point in 1 minute elevator pitch and maybe we will come again tomorrow to read your full story. 

With the above three problems, I see three areas for change.
  • The Hindu and Shiv instead of debating about politics, should first think about renewing its communication mechanism,  story-line vs. actual content of article, using pictures or other means to share new topics. Originally The Hindu was just a newspaper, then it introduced Sundays, then Tuesdays, then Fridays, then a supplement every day. In a similar manner, try to change your communication models to the new world order
  • As you pitched yourself as a quality paper (as opposed to the likes of TOI), try engaging the audience with quality debates by encouraging new order concepts, keep the language really simple and don't regurgitate words. Know your English era is fading, there are many other ways now people can learn better English. So drop your English panache and focus on real ideas.
  • Time is an essence, before publishing try using a summariser app to see if the real message comes through. As highlighted above, Shiv's message only shows his bias about Modi when I ran his article through the summariser. If he was truly trying to engage the audience about new type of politics and nation building then the proof of the pudding is out there - his message has been omitted in algorithimisation (yes I can make up some new words like Shiv - and wake up the techncrati is going to rule the world whether you like it or not) -
So if you don't want them to rule and if "this type of world view was thought to be more dangerous than any secularism that you and your friends might have espoused", then wake up, learn the new tricks to stop them. Hope my write-up makes sense and The Hindu reinvents itself. Also please use http://freesummarizer.com/ to see if my message is conveyed - try to shrink it to 5 sentences and see if the gist conveys my message :)

Finally a joke to finish the order of the day (truly from Facebook). Apparently the media has junked "Kochadiiyan" that the graphics looks like amateurish and the film quality was not to its expectation and cannot match to the Hollywood grandeur and so on and on. This social-media junkie  rips apart and truly reflecting to the new world-order expectations that "We also expect our Indian media and news channels to be like the NY times, the CNNs, the BBCs or the Al-Jazeeras' - but what do we get? Shrill pitched anchors and garbage news! - so are we complaining that we don't get international quality media and news outlets - No! - Just keep quiet and move on!...."

Anyway somehow got Rajini and Deepika's photo to get more coverage to my blog! Vaybara Gaantham-appa... (Business Magnet) - If you have fully read this write-up to the end, then I have succeeded in the new-news world!