There isn’t a media conference these days where the subject doesn’t wind back to online vs offline journalism. Usually the debate is polarised between those who accuse ‘hardcopy hardliners’ of being fossil dinosaurs, and traditional hacks who think citizen journalists are impostors.
Till recently, I confess, I was a skeptic. The digital divide globally and within our countries made the debate only theoretical for us in developing countries. Before we stick computers into a classroom, I argued, how about making sure it has a roof first? What’s the point of ‘leapfrogging’ to computer literacy when schools don’t have textbooks, teachers are often absent and school kids suffer from chronic malnutrition?
These arguments are still valid, and some of them have been levelled at initiatives like ‘One Laptop Per Child’. Nepal’s internet penetration rate is 5 per cent, but a survey showed 20 per cent had used the internet in the last three months. According to a BBC Trust poll in 2007, nearly 80 per cent of those using the internet accessed it from cybercafés, mostly to check emails, and stayed online for only 1-2 hours a week. But things are changing rapidly because of the online application process for the US visa lottery, and with 17 per cent of Nepalis living and working abroad at any given time, VOIP and chats have spread the use of the internet.
But how much potential is there for online journalism? Till a few years ago I was a hardcore hardcopy guy. Now, some Nepali FM stations have more listeners downloading broadcasts from the net than tuning in through the radio. If you miss the BBC Nepali service at 8:45 PM you can listen to it at your leisure online, although you may have to wait a while for the full download in Nepal because of low bandwidth. When Nepali Times started in May 2000, it was online for the first two months before the first hardcopy edition came out in July and today, we have more readers online than in print.
At a recent media conference in Hong Kong, panelists for a session on the sustainability of online journalism listed the pros and cons. There was the familiar listing of the minus points of online journalism:
- citizen journalists lack training and this hurts the credibility of the content
- the information surplus makes it difficult to find relevant information
- any Tom, Dick or Hari can do blogs
- readers visit sites they agree with, leading to ideological ghettoisation
- content is prone to misuse for defamation
- not ‘mass media’ but ‘individuated media’
The plus points were also familiar:
- digital, multimedia content
- interactive
- dynamic updates, deadlines meaningless
- end of geography
- the medium levels the playing field
Most panelists agreed that neither side was right, nor wrong. The consensus was that online media is like a tiger, and if you don’t ride it, it will gobble you up. Just as radio before the advent of tv was different from radio after tv, newspapers too have to adapt to survive. The newspapers of the internet age have to change hardcopy content in order to complement news portals, their online editions have to separate products and not be treated like an afterthought where paper content is dumped. Content has to be written to contribute to a pool of knowledge of the subject that updates past coverage and will itself need updating in real time.
Online news sites do not compete against each other for eyeballs, but together they compete against social networking sites. An average reader of a news site in the US spends only 2-8 minutes a month there, but they spend at least 7 hours a month on Facebook alone. Readers are no longer reading an entire newspaper from start to finish, they pick and chose what they like to read online and preprogram their computers to do the sorting for them.
There are many examples of newspapers and magazines that have adapted their hardcopy editions to the internet age (The Economist, by making its paper copy complement online information, has overtaken Time and Newsweek in North America in circulation) or launched award-winning sites (The Guardian) that are now far ahead of the hardcopy in terms of readership.
The critical issue is revenue. The consensus in Hong Kong was that very few news outlets can get away with charging for content, and the only models that work are with financial magazines. The hope is that ad revenue for online will pick up and ultimately overtake the paper edition. But for the foreseeable future in Nepal, the income must still come from selling the hardcopy and the space in it to pay for the online editions.
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I don’t claim to understand newspaper revenue models but the bit about only financial magazines working intrigues me.
I can only think of the FT charging a price for usage above a certain minimum because every industry exec needs the paper, same with the Economist – both have an amazing staff too.
The Wall Street Journal, though cheaper, fails to attract higher revenue is because it does not first allow readers to test it before asking for money.
Surprisingly, one of my favourite magazines, the New Yorker, is a bit of a mystery, they charge a pittance despite that fact that they are so well reputed, and write so well. Their research is so solid that they are seen as standard bearers for the industry (apparently) and yet they have so little on topical issues and they appear as such snobs with their art and drama coverage that I end up thinking they are communists.
The reason why I spend time on your newspaper online is simply because:
1) you have a very well designed website, extremely simple layout with a lot of space.
2) The quality of your writers is substantially better, they don’t go on showing how smart they are, they simply report and deliver their analysis
3) You are not going to like this, but I come back to the site despite its static content because of the type of reader comments that you attract
4) The regular updates, such as this, are a bonus read
5) Again, the fact that your comments section in itself is designed for prominent display gives added respectability to that section, perhaps one of the reasons why people feel obliged to say relatively sensible things.
I remember when internet was first introduced in India, they claimed that they were going to finish with arrange-marriage and so the dowry system of which India is still a grand victim, in number and for its brutality, with the far reaching ability of the net. But it proved a wrong guess, now there is even much more “prosperous market” to find brides and grooms on line in all over India (spectacular but sad at the same time due to its negative impact that they may cause in our social lives). I am not agreed with the assumption that on line service will affect negatively on the sale of print newspapers. Online journalism is there to flourish between millions of nepali youth, enthusiastically inclined toward modern tools like English and internet. Today, Nepali media counts with this vibrant and modern youth, this is without doubt an advantage! Actually, I am also optimistic seeing the level of political and cultural conversation that Nepali Times alone generates, a merit for the founder, Kunda Dixit. I am a regular reader of 7 or 8 foreign newspapers online only, and practically I read them as they enrich me also. But I cannot say so about nepali newspapers with total confidence, why? Now, perhaps it is the time that traditional hacks start to ask, in a different way, who really The Impostor is.
Honestly speaking, I always apreciated Nepali Times for its efforts to create debates and reflexions. Moreover, I find some interesting similarities between Huffington Post(one of my favorite online newspaper for its diversity and not for its ideological interpretation) and Nepali Times, so often.
Yes, I am talking about the very Huffington Post which is a website which deals with political information in about 25% of its space. Always opens with a great theme supported by a great image. It includes 22 sections: from politics to comedy, through technology and style. Now they are opening new local sections (already present in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and New York). Last Wednesday, without going any further, they put on-line stuffs with a new image of oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, with videos and links to new information on the environmental disaster. Blogger like Dominique Strauss-Kahn (Managing Director of International Monetary Fund)contributed with a post-delivery, note-on growth and employment. Along with other brainy posts analyzing the national and international news, highlighting a mix of news where the photos of the most extravagant Lady Gaga’s new mansion in Beverly Hills was ilustrated, a story about why men cheat on women, or revealing secrets the model Kendra Wilkinson, who has just told in a book their sexual encounters with Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy.
Nothing like taking a stroll through the Editor of The Huffington Post in New York’s Soho in order to certify that this is a company of the new era: an army of men on his/her twenties and thirties dominates in the newsroom. With 127 employees, 55 of them journalists, (compared to 1,000 of The New York Times) and thousands of “citizen journalists”, the HuffPo produces some news of their own, but, above all, select news from other media and presents them in the most elegant way possible (creating traffic to these resources by links). Before the question what is the proportion of content versus links, it is obtained the answer: “I’ll find the numbers”, numbers that did not stop coming.
The Huffington Post, a spiral that continues to incorporate visitors, is becoming a great phenomenon, news site of newly minted digital era. Experts estimate that by the end of the year it will have overtaken in terms of traffic to the inner sanctum, The New York Times: the so-called gray lady of American Kiosk, threatened by the grande dame of the blogosphere, Arianna Huffington.
HuffPo is financed through advertising. They had five years in pursuit of the holy grail: profitability. “We are profitable,” proudly announced Arianna Huffington with her hair sleek and a long elegant lacquered pink jacket in a recent University conference in Barcelona. But they do not provided figures. As reported in Business Insider, the revenues in 2009 were 11.8 million euros.
With this analogy, what I mean to say is that the market is created and explored. Media can no longer follow the traditional approach to earn for survival, and it is another thing If the sole aim becomes to earn money, then obviously it will move upside down. Instead of saling publicity why not the media can sell the product, instead of relying governamental and non governamental ads why can’t it make them be rely on you? There is the crux of the matter. There is a market in Nepal and a nepali one for both on-line and print media, but there lacks sufficient , how iit could be said, perhaps Third Eye?
‘The Economist, by making its paper copy complement online information, has overtaken Time and Newsweek in North America in circulation’.
Where did you get that piece of information ? I am a loyal subscriber of the Economist having given up on ‘Time’ over a decade ago after its tablodization was complete. But the number of subscription of ‘Time’ in North America is much higher in than the ‘Economist’. As for Newsweek, it is in its death bed. The Post company is looking to sell it. Ironically, it tried to re-fashion itself like a opinion magazine like Economist. But it was too little too late. But its subscription is still higher than the Economist.
I agree with Nilabh, the Nepali Times site is my favourite. It is clear, uncluttered, doesn’t preach, isn’t didactic, has all shades of opinion and a healthy debate in its feedback section. It is the most important site to read for anyone interested in contemoparary Nepalese issues. What a refreshing change from some of the other sites. However, it should be more dynamic and use more multimedia content. As Kunda says, it should not look like an afterthought to the hardcopy edition.
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Very well said Nilabh on the issue of spending your time with this newspaper. I would like to add one more point though it might be a slight digression. When I was in Nepal, I just loved touching and going through the paper edition of the Times. What I would love is to be able to see the complete print edition pdf of this paper, available to the readers as soon as it is prepared, even before the paper is printed. And for that, I am willing to be a paid subscriber of that pdf edition.