Birthday Greetings
A year ago a dot-com caused a furore in the Indian media scene by announcing its arrival in grand style. It had to be the masthead of the Times of India.
A year ago I was working for the news channel of that dot-com. I had moved there from economictimes.com. From the content-rich perch I descended down to fend/fight for content. All we did was sub agency copies and the odd story from the correspondents(thank God for that).
To my dismay the stress was not so much on journalism but on just having a news channel.
I slowly but surely learnt that this ain’t no rediff.com. I don’t think those who mattered also knew how to look at the news channel as an entity.
In a horizontal portal you cannot expect to generate a lot of original content. Logistically, it is very difficult. I guess it does not make business sense either to establish a vast network of correspondents and stringers. It is naive on our part to think that purely online ventures will run like a regular newspaper.
But the point is nobody looked at an online venture as a publishing activity. Majority of the online ventures in India are run by MBAs from the best institutions you can name. They are inevitably busy trying to hold on to their fat salaries. Their relevance lies in running-down creative people.
Do I sound pathetic. Yeah. The dot-com demise is proof that these management graduates didn’t have the foggiest idea about what online publishing was all about.
As the dust settles down I'm not sure if some more “big players” will try desperately to fall.
At least they seem intent on doing just that. While there is still some sense and a lot of money they should rethink their strategies. Most have forgotten about the masthead but few will forget Tehelka. Than means journalists trained or untrained can do a far better job in the market place that all management graduates put together.
Subhash Rai