Media in India

Promising Local Site: I Love Chennai

2005-11-10T01:31:00.000-08:00

G.R.Krishna ("GRK") has launched I Love Chennai, a very neat looking web site and "campaign" for folks who are passionate about this cool (huh!) city.

The web site has some great photos, including as part of the Chennai Photoblog. A good example (of a couple of "machis" on their bikes):

ILC also has an online discussion forum and plans to soon launch "Its our City", "an online PDF ezine" to which "you can contribute articles, photos, writeups, ideas...etc".

A very promising start indeed! I hope ILC continues to keep up the initial momentum. They are absolutely on the right track by making it a community effort.

Long term, I think such a creative and community focused effort can give mainline papers - like The Hindu, Deccan Chronicle (that silly tabloid passing off as a newspaper with its horrible Sun TV ads ), TOI (if and when they eventually launch) - and even the neighbourhood papers a serious run for their money.

PS: Here's my 2-bit for GRK and co.: get the guys behind Bosey on to this platform.

"How RSS feeds are like magazine subscriptions"

2005-11-10T01:21:00.000-08:00

A great post by Kaps comparing RSS feeds and magazine subscrptions:

RSS feed subscriptions are quite similar to magazine subscriptions. A subscription shows a commitment to read but there is no guarantee that the subscriber will read it. Both are delivered to you once the stuff is published.

A higher subscription base provides some comfort level to the writer / blogger as he/she knows that there is a committed readership.

Blog comments are like ‘Letters to the Editor’. Accolades are hard to come by.

People who visit the blog directly are similar to people who buy the magazine from the newsstand. This kind of readership is normally seasonal (usually Mon – Fri).

SiliconBeat provides a good model for Indian journalist bloggers

2005-09-02T21:23:00.000-07:00

SiliconBeat, a blog created by a couple of technology industry focused journalists at the San Jose Mercury News, provides a great model for Indian mainstream media journalists.

A key feature about SiliconBeat is that the blogger-journalists leverage the advantages of the online medium (including its infinite space and more informal nature) to go beyond what appear in the print.

Especially interesting is the way in which they use the blog as a forum to aplogize for the inevitable reporting and editorial errors that occur in the printed version. This apology to the CEO of Wine.com, along with a clear explanation of why the error occured, is a good example. Please note that the writers don't say "our editorial desk screwed up". They stick to the "we" approach - as in the entire publication.

The SJ Mercury management deserves kudos for allowing their reporters to be so frank about their vulnerabilities - it's something that even several technology idols can learn from.

Such a blog is great branding tool for the paper itself (the journalists often link to "the full story in tommorow's paper"), plus a great way for the journalists to attract sources and tip-offs for new stories. For the audience, it is a great way to learn how journalists operate as well as an opportunity to interact directly with the reporters.

I eagarely look forward to the day when leading Indian reporters follow SiliconBeat's lead.

An economics writer who makes for interesting reading

2005-06-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

Businessworld's Niranjan Rajadhyaksha is an exception in many ways including

1. He writes interestingly on economic matters, and

2. He provides a refereshing change to the leftist "economists" who have dominated the Indian media - including unfortunately, the business media - for a long time.

His latest column titled "Tragic outcome of bad economics" is a nice example where he weaves a pattern using three real-life happenings. One of them describes how, in Sholapur district, family members have "bumped off their aged, shown them to be suicides caused by suffocating debts, and then claimed compensation from the government." (If the government incentivices suicides, it reaps murders!)

Government policies that violate the laws of economics often do more harm than good. It could be any of the idiocies that the political class perpetrates: the urge to announce blanket compensation packages, the attempt to buy votes through promises of cheap (or even free) power, or the attempts to block the growth of efficient cash and forward markets for agricultural products. Each can have perverse results - from the misuse of energy to cold-blooded murder.

Pepsi CFO Indra Nooyi gets bloggered

2005-05-21T02:08:00.000-07:00

The top item today on the Pepsico web site:

PepsiCo President and CFO Indra Nooyi delivered a commencement address May 15 at Columbia University’s Business School.

In speaking about the powerful role America holds in the world today, Ms. Nooyi encouraged these new business leaders to make a positive and personal difference as representatives of this great country. She used the analogy of a human hand to emphasize America’s leadership position and to ensure it continues as the world’s “helping hand.”

Regrettably, the analogy was interpreted in some circles as unpatriotic or disrespectful. As a result of this feedback, Indra issued a formal apology.

Read "in some cirlces" as "in several blogs".

Here's the text of Nooyi's apology:

A message from PepsiCo's President & CFO, Indra Nooyi
Following my remarks to the graduating class of Columbia University’s Business School in New York City, I have come to realize that my words and examples about America unintentionally depicted our country negatively and hurt people.

I appreciate the honest comments that have been shared with me since then, and am deeply sorry for offending anyone. I love America unshakably – without hesitation – and am extremely grateful for the opportunities and support our great nation has always provided me.

Over the years I’ve witnessed and advised others how a thoughtless gesture or comment can hurt good, caring people. Regrettably, I’ve proven my own point. Please accept my sincere apologies.

– Indra Nooyi

The Times of India has a detailed version of the developments:

In her address last Sunday, the Chennai-born Nooyi compared the five major continents of the world to the five fingers of the human hand. First was Africa -the pinky finger - small and somewhat insignificant but when hurt, the entire hand hurt with it. Next was Asia - the thumb - strong and powerful, yearning to become a bigger player on the world stage. Third was Europe - the index finger - pointing the way. Fourth was South America - the ring finger - the finger which symbolizes love and sensualness.

According to some students who were present at the graduation ceremony and who fired up the issue in the blogosphere, Nooyi then reserved the remaining finger for the United States (and not North America, they say), launching into "a diatribe about how the US is seen as the middle finger to the rest of the world."

They say she then went on to make "condescending" remarks on about America's role in the world and how it is "our responsibility to change the current state of world opinion of the US and make the other fingers rise in unison with us as we move forward."...

... Talking to this correspondent on Wednesday evening, Nooyi regretted that her remarks were being cited out of context on various blogs. She pointed out that the predominant theme of the address was how to advance American interests.

Jeff Nolan, a VC, points out the big picture: the mainstream media had zero role to play in Nooyi's humbling.

if there was any question to the notion that corporate entities should pay very close attention to the blogsphere, this should settle it. Go check out the Yahoo message board for Pepsi (NYSE:PEP) following the ugly commencement speech that CFO Indra Nooyi gave to Columbia's MBA graduating class recently. This story erupted in blogs over the last week, not a word spilled about it in the MSM (nor would there be considering what Nooyi was saying in her speech.) The firestorm caused Nooyi to put a statement on Pepsico's website first suggesting that her comments were misconstrued, but today there is a statement on the homepage expressing that she is "deeply sorry".

"Girls again beat boys in school exams!": A politically correct non-news

2005-05-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

It is school results season again. Which means that we will be treated to an endless stream of gushing newspaper and TV reports on how girls have yet again "out done" boys in pass percentages.

I don't have anything against girls or encouraging more of them to get educated. My PROBLEM (read as BIG problem) is that this is NOT NEWSWORTHY!

Can you tell me the last time when boys outscored girls in terms of pass percentage? No idea, right? Then WHY THE HELL is this "phenomenon" which happens year after year after year... considered newsworthy? Why should this be the only area when journalists violate the trade maxim that "Dog bites man is NOT NEWS. Man bites dog IS."?

Can we, Sun TV, The Hindu, et al, PLEASE treat this as news only when boys outscore girls? THANKS!

Should bloggers bother with accreditation?

2005-05-16T22:48:00.000-07:00

From IANS (via MSN):

Bloggers to get official accreditation
New Delhi, May 17: If you are a serious blogger, the Indian government may just open its doors to you.

India is in the process of framing rules for granting accreditation to Internet journalists and bloggers for the first time, taking a reality check on an evolving world of net writers who could shape opinion and who have already been granted access to official corridors in countries such as the US.

"We are framing the rules for giving accreditation to dotcom journalists, including bloggers," Principle Information Officer Shakuntala Mahawal told IANS.

The first meeting on this was held a fortnight ago, and more are scheduled in the coming days.

"We want an inclusive policy and we want to complete the process as early as possible," Mahawal said.

First they will be offered accreditation. Then invites for official junkets. Then will come plots in "dotcom journalists colony". And so on. Domestication complete, we will never see a Tehelka-like expose again.

Do we really want this to happen to bloggers?

Biz Journo movements

2005-05-10T04:39:00.000-07:00

Vidya Viswanathan, who covers the IT industry, is back with Businessworld after a brief stint with rival Business Today. So is M.Anand, who had earlier joined a different Business Today (a Gulf based publication). Hats off to BW's Editor Tony Joseph, himself a returnee, for managing to attract back these two very good journalists.

Rahul Satchidanand, who used to be with Business Standard in Bangalore, is now doing some very good work (from the same city) for Business Today.

Disappointing coverage of "tsunami warning"

2004-12-30T22:00:00.000-08:00

Some mahanubhavulu ("great person") in the Union Home Ministry screwed up big time yesterday by putting out a warning that another Tsunami was set to hit southern coastline. While no Tsunami arrived (naturally), the idiot announcement triggered off widespread panic among people and tremendous loss in business productivity.

It is quite well known that aftershocks follow most major earthquakes and can occur up to a week after the main one strikes. But the main point - which all the major media outlets have missed to point out - is that these aftershocks are very rarely anywhere near as powerful as the original. (The aftershocks felt in Andaman & Nicobar islands since the big one on Sunday have been on the 5-7 range.) So, it was quite safe to assume that Thursday's "officially predicted" (ordered??) Tsunami could at worst cause as much damage as the big one.

While there's nothing new about a government screw up (I bet the fellow(s) who caused so much damage won't even lose a day's salary), the sad fact is that the media screwed up as well. The media - including TV channels and news web sites - did nothing else apart from playing up the "warning" faithfully.

The least the TV channels could have done is to position a camera at a suitable location in front of the beach and transmit the pictures live (at least on a corner of the screen), so that people could see for themselves exactly how far the ocean waves had actually "invaded" their cities/towns. This simple move would have scotched all rumours instantly and bought a lot of publicity to whichever channel(s) that had the presence of mind to spare one camera for the purpose.

Hopefully, some channel will wake up at least now and leave one camera focused on the sea and transmit the pictures (at least via streaming feed on their web site).

Outlook reporter's anti-brahmin rhetoric might cost Hathway Group dear

2004-12-12T02:24:00.000-08:00

It is amazing how Outlook magazine has been tolerating its Chennai-based reporter S. Anand's rabidly anti-brahmin articles.

It used to funny reading Anand's anachronistic rants - including on how Carnatic Music is dominated by Brahmins and one especially pathetic attempt to rake up controversy over a musical instrument (the mridangam).

But Anand seems to have crossed all boundaries with his highly biased and intemperate pieces on the Jayendra Saraswathi arrest affair. Click Here to sample some of the feedback for Anand's latest article. Outlook better pay heed and rein in Anand. Else, it will have to pay with a decline in its readership. I already know of some subsribers of the magazine who have woved never to touch it again - and plan to write to the publishers saying as much.

The after-effects of Anand's intemperate writing might not stop with just the magazine. The boycott - and the acompanying financial implications - might also spread to other Hathway Group companies like Hathway Internet and other companies. Is Rajan Raheja listening?

Ashok Advani's arrest final nail in Business India Group's fortunes?

2004-12-12T02:17:00.000-08:00

T.N. Ninan, Editor of Business Standard, writes about the rise and fall - thanks to an ill-fated TV channel - of the Business India Group and its founder Ashok Advani.

Deccan Chronicle pulls off successful IPO

2004-11-26T08:50:00.000-08:00

Now that Deccan Chronicle has pulled off a successful IPO (the issue was oversubscribed on its opening day today), the Hyderabad-based company is certain to go ahead with the plans for its Tamil Nadu editions (expected for February 2005). I guess this is also likely to spur The Times of India to speed up the launch of its Chennai edition.

We should be in for some interesting times going forward in the Chennai newspaper market.

I hope the new entrants have free-to-access online editions as well. And be as good - or better - than The Hindu in publishing the daily list of carnatic music concerts in town.

Gujarati newspaper Saurashtra Samachar acquired by Dainik Bhaskar Group

2004-09-13T22:17:00.000-07:00

From Business Standard

Dainik Bhaskar Group, which earlier created a stir by launching its Gujarati daily Divya Bhaskar, seems to be in an acquisition mood. In a Rs 7-crore (Rs 70-million) deal, the group has picked up 90 per cent stake in one of the oldest vernacular dailies in Gujarat, Saurashtra Samachar. Dainik Bhaskar will use the new acquisition to launch Divya Bhaskar's latest edition from highly competitive Rajkot city, hub of Saurashtra region.

Click Here to read the full article.

Deccan Chronicle to launch Chennai edition by Jan 2005, embarks on IPO

2004-09-12T21:36:00.000-07:00

The Chennai edition of the Andhra Pradesh's largest English language newspaper is expected to roll out in January 2005, Business Standard
reports quoting PK Iyer, executive director of Deccan Chronicle Holdings.

Extracts:

Mid-Day Multimedia, the only listed newspaper company, has a P/E of 11. It reported a net profit of Rs 9 crore (Rs 90 million) on a turnover of Rs 93 crore (Rs 930 million) in 2003-04.

Deccan Chronicle made a profit of Rs 27 crore (Rs 270 million) on a turnover of Rs 122 crore (Rs 1.22 billion) in 2003-04...

...At present, DCHL is owned fully by brothers T Venkattram Reddy and T Vinayak Ravi Reddy.

NDTV to launch business channel

2004-09-12T21:30:00.000-07:00

New Delhi Television Limited has filed an application with the ministry of information and broadcasting, seeking approval for a 24-hour business news channel, Business Standard reports quoting NDTV Director Sameer Manchanda.

"Since we launched the 9 am-4 pm business news on NDTV 24x7 two months ago, we have received a tremendous response. And during the last two weeks, according to industry reports, we have done better than CNBC," Manchanda said in the report.

Click Here to read the full article.

Traditional media's shortcomings pushing people to start blogs

2004-09-08T22:22:00.000-07:00

"I started the blog because I was tired of giving in-depth responses to a media question only to have the result be what the reporter or columnist intended to write and I was just fodder to help them make their point. With the blog, I can present my position on a topic in its entirety and not have to worry about how they condense a two-hour conversation into 500 words."

- Mark Cuban, co-founder of Broadcast.com and owner of the Dallas Mavericks

(Source: iwantmedia.com)

Guy Kawasaki on the value of business publications

2004-09-04T03:53:00.000-07:00

Guy Kawasaki, a former marketing exectuive at Apple and the founder of Silicon Valley investment bank Garage Technology Ventures, recently got a question from a 19-year-old as part of his Forbes.com Q&A column. The 19-year-old thought he was ready to do a start-up since he had "accumulated loads of relevant knowledge" by "reading business magazines and financial papers zealously since (he) was 13".

Here's (part of) Kawasaki's reply:

Why do you think reading magazines and papers means you've accumulated "loads of relevant knowledge"? You've accumulated loads of PR and the impressions of journalists who have never started a company.

This statement is even more true in India.

Click Here to read the full Forbes.com column.

Star News not to pay "highest paid woman in Indian media" any longer

2004-08-20T22:01:00.000-07:00

Ravina Raj Kohli, reportedly the highest paid woman CEO in the Indian media, has "left" Hindi news channel, Star News, reports Business Stadard.

Is TOI going to - finally, finally - launch a Chennai edition?

2004-08-15T00:13:00.000-07:00

1. The Times of India group has been putting out ads for editorial positions in Chennai for a few month now.

2. Last week, The New Indian Express reduced its cover price to Rs. 1.50 and sent a spam SMS to my Aircel mobile number advertising this fact.

3. Also last week, The Hindu entered the consumer exhibition/event market (and devoted generous amount of space in the main paper and The Metro Plus supplement - across several days - to promote the event).

1 + 2 + 3 = the launch of Times of India's Chennai edition is finally going to happen - after 10 years of rumours to that effect?

Businessworld hikes cover price

2004-08-11T05:47:00.000-07:00

Weekly business magazine Businessworld has doubled its cover price to Rs. 10.

Businessworld, which belongs to the Calcutta-based ABP Group, had cut its cover price to Rs.5 and turned weekly (from fortnightly) in 1999. That move had prompted rival Business Today to bring down its cover price from Rs. 15 to Rs. 10.

An article in Business Standard (which was formerly a part of ABP), examines the reasons and the potential impact.

New York Times profiles Indian returnees

2004-07-25T03:00:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has published an interesting article featuring several professionals of Indian origin, who quit successful careers abroad, to return to India. As the article indicates, several of the returnees are venturing beyond their lives in "gated colonies" and making a positive change to their wider social environment.

While several reports in the Indian media have profiled returnees, none has done as comprehesive a job as the NYT report. Just the sheer number of people who have been interviewed for the articles indicates the wide difference in quality that exists between the top new publications in both countries.

Here's one from the many examples from the NYT article:

A radiologist, Dr. Kalyanpur had resigned himself to a significant pay drop upon his return. Then he proved to Yale that he could accurately read CT scans and other images transmitted via broadband to India. He began working for them from afar before starting his own business, Teleradiology Solutions Inc., in 2002.

He spends his days reading images for the emergency room nightshifts of about 40 American hospitals, compensating for the shortfall of nighttime radiologists in the United States, and being compensated at near-American salary levels. His partner, like him, is American-trained; at least two more Indian-born radiologists are moving back from the United States to work with them.

"India always suffered from the cream of its medical community migrating overseas," he said. "Now there is the possibility to go back."

India changed in the time Dr. Kalyanpur, 39, was away. Where it once took a year to get a phone connection, it may now take a day.

But he changed as well. He and his wife gravitated to Bangalore, where neither of them had ever lived, in part for the cosmopolitanism in its pubs and cultural life. Regent Place drew them because many European expatriates also live there.

"It makes the transition easier," he said.

On his return, India's poverty loomed up at him, and he and his wife grapple with how to deal with it. They raised money to put a playground in the government school in the village across from their housing complex, and are doing the same for another school nearby.

It is a small attempt to bridge India's great and growing gulf. On a Saturday, children with want visible in thin faces, in bare feet and tattered uniforms, scaled the swing set bought by the returnees, whose own children played across the street inside Regent Place.

Click Here to read the full article.

Why I prefer blogs to dead-trees

2004-07-18T22:01:00.000-07:00

I regularly track the blogs of several Indian (and NRI) bloggers including: Rajesh Jain, Om Malik, Samanth, Rangachari Anand and Satya, as well as some "group blogs" like India Watch and Living in India.

Why?

Essentially, these bloggers are smart folks in my book. And I'd like to know what they are reading and thinking. Their posts - at various times - tend to inform me, amuse me, make me reflect, and other such good stuff that my morning newspaper does not.

Here, according to a Blogads survey, is why folks in the US like blogs :

(The survey's findings are hardly surprising. It's just nice to see it in graphical format.)

Btw, I read somewhere (read "on some blog") today, that the number of bloggers out there has crossed 3 million. Hmm... Wonder how much time I'm going to be spending each day following up on all the smart ones. What I'm pretty sure is I'm going to have great fun - and become better a informed person - in the process. And that most of the additional time that I'm going to spend in following up on blogs is going to come from whatever I spend currently on watching TV (especially news and sports).

Everything you wanted to know (and some things you didn't care to know) about ChrysCapital's Ashish Dhawan

2004-06-24T23:27:00.000-07:00

New Delhi-based private equity fund ChrysCapital is vastly different from its former avatar, Chrysalis Capital. While Chrysalis began life (in Mumbai) as an venture capital firm focussed on start-up investments, today's ChrysCapital is best know for its late-stage investments (often in already publicly-listed firms).

The fascinating part of this transformation is that one of the fund's original partners - Senior Managing Director Ashish Dhawan - has been firmly in the driver's seat throughout the process.

It's a story that needed to be told. As a cover story. And kudos to Business Today for telling it first.

Thankfully, unlike the glowing profiles that BT is famous for - including the one featuring infamous stock brocker Harshad Mehta with his Lexus on the cover - this one has a lot of facts. Some well known. And others less so.

That ChrysCapital's first fund would have been a disaster but for the pioneering investment in Raman Roy founded BPO firm Spectramind is well known. Quite expectedly, the BT article talks about this and takes the inevitable digs at the fund's investments in companies like Cheecoo Networks. (Of course, the article does not mention that at the time Chrysalis was making disastorous dotcom investments, Business Today itself used to dedicate a separate section of its magazine, titled "BT.com", to write - glowing, most of the time - about all things dotcom. The section, which actually started quite late in the boom period, has since been given a quiet burial.)

Among the things that are not well known about ChrysCapital is why exactly co-founder Raj Kondur quit. (It was generally assumed that Kondur took the fall for the fund's dotcom heavy portfolio.) To its credit, the BT article throws new light on this as well. Quoting an ex-ChrysCapital exectuive, BT says "much of ChrysCapital's dotcom fiasco happened because of Dhawan's infatuation with the phenomenon". And adds that it was Kondur, not Dhawan, who was primemover behind the fund's investment in Spectramind. "When ChrysCapital started talking to Raman Roy, he was already negotiating with at least six other venture funds and the man who spent the most time trying to woo Roy (once, an entire day on October 9, 1999) was Kondur, not Dhawan," the article says. Kondur actually quit, the article says, because he fell out with Dhawan and was eased out by the latter.

The article describes in detail how, in late 1998, Dhawan (then aged 29) and Kondur (27) quit their Wall Street jobs (at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley respectively) and went about raising their first fund. They received a $500,000 seed investment from executives in the US private equity industry including George E. McCown, Co-founder and Managing Director, McCown De Leeuw & Co. (MDC), a Menlo Park (California)-based private equity fund. (McCown described Dhawan as the best undergraduate analyst the firm ever hired.)

"Over the next five months, Dhawan and Kondur criss-crossed the US, flying cheap airlines and living out of inexpensive hotels, and met dozens of potential investors. A few said a polite no, but most, interestingly, liked their sheer energy and enthusiasm. Among them were people like Henry M. Paulson Jr., Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, Rajat Gupta of McKinsey, Victor Menezes of Citigroup, Gurcharan Das, formerly of P&G, besides companies like Microsoft". In the fall of 1999, ChrysCapital was ready to launch with $63.8 million signed up.

Now for the trivia. Want to know where Dhawan lives? (Since the article appears in BT, you can be sure of one thing: the neighborhood will be described as a "tony borough"). How much his new house cost? Who his neighbors are? What he likes to eat? And even how he chose his wife? The BT article serves it all.

Click Here to read the full article. (Paid subscription required).

Who reads blogs?

2004-06-16T23:34:00.000-07:00

Here is a report on the profile of people who read blogs based on a survey of 17,159 blog site visitors during a two-day period in May 2004.

The survey enquired visitors about their age, income, media consumption, online spending habits and political affiliations. The survey learned that 61 percent of blog readers were more than 30 years old and nearly 40 percent of those surveyed have a household income of $90,000 or more.

Is this relevant to India? You bet! Blogging is as global as it gets. Check out Livinginindia.com

Promoters shareholding in NTDV

2004-05-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

According to newly listed NDTV's
filing with the stock exchange , at the time of listing, promoters Prannoy Roy (Chairman) and Radhika Roy (Managing Director) together (and equally) hold a 54.78% stake - or "voting rights" as the filing puts it - in the company.