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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Mint-on-sunday/  The new new media
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The new new media

Apart from a few innovative ones, Indian new media start-ups are merely sticking to a script written decades ago

Photo: iStockphotoPremium
Photo: iStockphoto

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a former editor, done out of an editor’s job, must want to launch a news site.

Sure, every new news site is new in its own way.

The newness can come from theme or subject, treatment or position. The mission statements of some of these sites (or interviews with their promoters) are replete with words such as voice, independent, new-age, new-generation, explanatory, and so on.

Still, many of the new news sites piggyback on traditional media, using armchairs to make up for the lack of feet on the street. For instance, it’s easy to do an opinion piece agreeing or disagreeing with Jim Rogers’ views on the government, spiced with liberal chunks from the original interview.

None of this is the new new media. That will have to be start-ups experimenting with innovations in data journalism, content delivery and technology, but more on that in a bit.

A media start-up that creates engaging (or entertaining) video content that goes viral will have to keep doing more and more of the same, maybe offer its services to an advertiser that wants to create what’s called branded content (or an ad that looks like the content), and basically play the same game that a TV channel is now playing. It would be a stretch to call such a start-up a new media company—unless beliefs and principles and attitudes and execution make the start-up very different. Vice is a good example of that, an amateurish youth magazine founded 20 years ago that has found an echo of its edgy, subversive personality in the new media landscape and parlayed this into a media empire.

I don’t see any Vices in the Indian new media landscape, though.

What I see are tired products, hoping that a new medium will make the reader overlook what is clearly a formula well past its best-by date.

What I also see are a handful of super-smart technology, data and delivery plays. Like Newshunt. Like HowIndiaLives. Like Indiaspend. Like Newsinshorts. These are representative of the new new media. They have challenges of their own—the lack of an editorial voice is a problem for some—but these are the companies exploring the frontiers of how people consume content and interact with it and, more importantly, what constitutes content in the current context.

The rest are merely sticking to a script written decades ago. The novelty will wear off soon.

R. Sukumar is editor, Mint.

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Published: 09 May 2015, 11:13 AM IST
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