Thursday, July 24, 2008

So what am I doing?

I'm getting asked that question a lot nowadays thanks to high-level movements in the publication I work for. And I can pretty much guarantee that I am not doing anything of the sort. As of now. Sort of. Maybe.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dont you every work at ure job? I mean ure forever blogging, several times in the day.

July 24, 2008 7:53 PM
Anonymous said...

T N Ninan – the CEO, the Editor
Disclaimer: I have high respect for the man himself.
For over ten years, T N Ninan has been the owner of Business Standard. He has held, enviably, the two most critical positions in a newspaper business – CEO and Editor. More importantly, at the same time.
Arguably, he is the best business editor in India (Aveek Sarkar of ABP endorses this view, along with a host of others). And as BS veterans would admit, he is still as sharp and a guiding force for the paper.
Yes, there are many negatives to the paper. Like often, the front page is too text heavy, lacks boxes and pictures... surprisingly, they never followed even the FT code of having a good five to six column picture on the front page and many other pages as well... in design parlance, it is called a visual that holds the entire page together. And headlines are the least innovative. Being a part of the ABP group in the past, it is rather sad that the paper is unable to come up with interesting headlines or even box heads. ‘Tell it as it is’ is a great formula, but readers today have to be attracted. BS continues to be identified as a paper for the older generation.
BS, for me, is still a good paper, but unlike ET, it is targeting readers who have the time to read it. On the other hand, ground realities are different today. Readers do not have the time today. The paper has to realise that. Even breaking stories are hidden in corners of the paper that other papers carry on their front page.
This is, however, a smaller issue. Ninan, the CEO’s role is something I wonder sometimes. The paper is busy recouping losses in good times and in bad times, the size of the paper (the number of pages) fall sharply. Of course, there are other things like moving offices to cheaper places, like the Mumbai office going to Goregaon and closure of one of the Gujarati editions in Rajkot.
BS, as a paper, has seen at least two to three booms in the stock markets. It never listed itself unlike a rediff.com. Even after a boom in the stock markets for the last four years and retail investors entering the market aggressively, it deferred its decision to increase circulation (through aggressive advertising) in the last one-two years. Even the Hindi and Gujarati editions were launched in February- March this year, when newsprint costs were on the rise (And everyone, including heads in the BS knew it). The Rajkot edition, as mentioned earlier, has been closed now. What is the sense of launching and closing an edition within months? – Besides a question of credibility, there is also a small case of people losing their jobs. (No, I do not belong to the red flag community)
Ten years back, BS was a force. Under Ninan’s stewardship and ABP’s ownership, it was a paper widely respected and read. In the last three years, more papers have come. Both Mint and Financial Chronicle are realities now. There will be more papers ... the FT-CNBC tie-up is stumbling now, but if/when it happens, there will be another paper to look forward to. Even ET is launching a business tabloid soon that will further segmentalise the market. Then, there are a whole lot of television channels that are revamping/launching themselves.
So by the end of this year or early next year, there would be a whole lot of action in the media companies’ front (not that it has been any less in the last couple of years). And while other papers are aggressively trying to position themselves as ‘the paper’ (whatever it is worth) or ‘employers of choice’, BS is taking a position where they intend to stay difficult for the ‘common reader’ and as an employer, it is moving offices and closing editions that have just begun operations.
Maybe, it is looking forward and defending itself against a possible recession. As Sun Tzu has said “Invincibility lies in the defence.” I would rather agree with the latter part of the quote, “the possibility of victory lies in the attack.”
Disclaimer: I still have a huge respect for the man himself.

July 25, 2008 1:27 AM
Anonymous said...

Hi K. thanx fr mentioning the pangea day link last time... here's another link: http://hotzone.yahoo.com/mission;_ylt=Amkw_qZdt7yW5Z6tCYZ6QkO7u8wF

J

July 26, 2008 1:37 AM
Anonymous said...

K, we really don't care. we come her to get gossip on the media industry, and that's it. Something we are getting less and less of these days.

July 28, 2008 10:25 AM

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