One of the privileges of being an interlocutor between the newspaper and its vast readership is to hear multiple opinions, diverse ideas of what a newspaper should be, and what adjustments the readers expect in this digital age. Readers sometimes call to ask a specific question, but the discussion invariably moves on to different areas of news production and the challenges therein.
Last week, a reader from Mumbai, K. S. Srinivasan, called to offer some suggestions regarding this newspaper’s Mumbai and Delhi editions. In the course of the conversation, he also raised some interesting questions about the nature of the revenue streams that govern the news media and the role of the Readers’ Editor.
Let me look at some of his suggestions for the Mumbai and Delhi editions before addressing his questions. Citing my earlier column, “ >Is the hyper-local getting due attention? ” (September 1, 2013), Mr. Srinivasan asked how a newspaper tweaks its mix of five different spatial realities for every reader: international, regional, national, local, and hyper-local. He felt that readers choose The Hindu not only to understand better national politics and policy but also South India. “I am based in Mumbai. My work takes me to Delhi often and I buy The Hindu in both cities. I find the coverage of South India limited to a couple of stories in the national pages. In my opinion, the readers of The Hindu in these two cities are either South Indians or people who want to know about what is happening in other parts of India. While the emphasis on hyper-local is fine, can it be at the cost of not providing crucial stories from peninsular India,” he asked.
I told him that I would share his concerns with the editorial team and that I was not aware of the reasons behind the mix in these editions. I am mandated to look at the newspaper post-publication and I am not part of the editorial process. The news mix is a constantly evolving process, and the editorial team follows a policy of discreet shift without losing a sense of continuity. Feedback from the readers forms the crux of change in newspapers like The Hindu.
Mr. Srinivasan’s next query was how I responded to some of the virulent reactions, which he noticed in the comments section of the Web edition. My answer was simple. I draw lessons from literature to navigate the choppy waters of professional life. George Eliot in the nineteenth century drafted my guiding principle: “A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.” I consider all readers of this newspaper as friends, and I sift all outpourings using the sieve called editorial values.
He wanted to know how I responded to the comments that questioned my independence and autonomy when I examined the charges of bias in the newspaper against the present Bharatiya Janata Party government. Does the fact that I am paid by the company that owns the newspaper decide my evaluation? The respective industry or ministry pays for arbitration and regulatory bodies. The Union government and the State governments fund various tiers of the Indian judiciary. Autonomy flows from institutional arrangements and is not necessarily impeded by the source of funding. In the case of The Hindu , this office was created by the owners of the newspaper to have a self-regulation mechanism that ensures accuracy, verification, and accountability. It is an earnest attempt to work out a credible device to strengthen the trust reposed by the readers in us by effecting visible mending of errors. I am sure that there would have been a proliferation of Readers’ Editors in India, and I would not be ploughing a lone furrow, if this office were to be a surrogate advertisement for the editorial team.
Advertisement revenue Most of the questions relating to advertisement revenue in news organisations beget their answers from the fact that credible news is a public good. The recent book by economist Julia Cagé, Saving the Media (Harvard University Press), argues that if democracy requires an informed citizenry, the present crisis in the media industry spells trouble. Ms. Cagé, who is an economics professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and a board member of Agence France-Presse, combines economics with her understanding of the media to analyse the issue of sustainability.
She proposes a new structure for the media, which is a combination of a foundation and a joint stock company. Her argument is that the news media, like universities and other contributors to the knowledge economy, provides a public good, and thus needs a special status for its functioning. She is not convinced of long-term sustainability based on the generosity of wealthy philanthropists. She cites the example of the Italian publisher Carlo Caracciolo and the settlement of his estate that pushed the newspaper Libération into crisis. She also explains how the problems of media companies multiplied instead of being resolved when they went public.
Though the Indian media industry has not yet reached a crisis point comparable to its Western counterparts, the time has come to recalibrate our own structures to ensure a sustainable public interest information ecology.
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
