1 week Ago By Guest Author
Explainer Briefly Slides By Vivan Sharan and Mannat Marwah India’s digital news landscape reveals a stark divide: some are breaking subscription records, while others struggle to gain traction. Moneycontrol Pro recently became India’s first digital publication to surpass a million paying subscribers, securing its place among the world’s top 15 digital media platforms by subscription. Meanwhile, respected brands like the Financial Times (FT) face challenges in expanding beyond a subscriber base of 13,000 in the country.
Most Indian print publications have struggled with digital transformation — and every day examples like the failure of the FT to monetise are a convenient scapegoat. They reinforce common fallacies associated with the lack of digital transformation success in the news industry. Three such fallacies that are particularly popular and simultaneously counterproductive for the news industry.
Fallacy 1: With Abundant Free News, Why Pay? The widespread availability of free news may leave even the most analytical among us wondering why consumers should pay for content. We tend to rely on free sources of news, and social media (88%), YouTube (93%), and chat apps (82%) are among the most popular. However, could it be that the abundance of free sources makes editorial oversight and reliable content more valuable than ever? The unchecked nature of user-generated content on free platforms often leads to misinformation.
For instance, a 2024 report titled “From Smartphones to Ballot Boxes,” indicates that misinformation impacts 70 percent of surveyed voters, who believe it has surged alongside internet usage. Predictably, most also feel that misinformation reduces their incentive to consume news. Digital news sources that prioritise editorial oversight amid the flood of unverified information may succeed in fighting the decline of news.
The Moneycontrol experience already shows this to be true for financial market focussed content, another area where misinformation is rampant. Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das recently cautioned against financial misinformation and warned banks and financial institutions. Deepfakes of personalities like Ratan Tata and Narayana Murthy giving investment advice also made rounds on the internet recently.
Fallacy 2: Digital News Is an Urban Luxury Many believe that digital news is confined to the urban elite, making it a luxury product limited to metropolitan consumers. But this view overlooks the reach of regional language publications, which often rival or surpass English-language dailies outside metro areas. Small town publishers in cities like Surat have grown significantly in the past decade both in terms of circulation and ad volume, surpassing any metro print market.
Hindi tops the list of registered publications across different languages. The digital sphere, too, reaches far beyond the biggest urban centres. Nearly 100 million already subscribe to video-on-demand services like Netflix, Jio and Amazon Prime Video in India.
A wide acceptance of paid digital services highlights the potential for digital news platforms to connect with a broader, diverse market beyond urban areas through tailored content and pricing. But widespread adoption may require investments in digital product innovation and business models. Some best-practices include interactive storytelling; advanced data analytics; sophisticated payments integration; flexible payment options; bundled offerings; and experiments with sub-products like messengers and games.
Fallacy 3: Government Ad Revenue Will Always Favour Print Media Newspapers do benefit from a stable revenue stream from government ads, while digital media does not. Many believe this is a structural infirmity that digital media will find hard to overcome. The Indian Newspaper Society reports that a large share of the Rs.
16,472 Crore ad revenue earned by print media in 2023 came from government ads, including tenders and state-led promotions. However, digital media isn’t structurally excluded from this pool. The Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity began allocating around 10 percent of government ad budgets to digital platforms last year.
Moreover, digital media could attract greater ad revenue by driving and capturing user-engagement metrics, much better than a medium like print ever can. Programmatic advertising has made this possible. It allows for ads to be transacted live, with the decision to run one ad over another based on the traffic, guarantee of revenue and the demographic consuming the ad-supported content.
Roadmap for the Future The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) is sure to expand digital media’s potential, but only if the news industry pays attention. AI has reduced production costs and improved efficiency by automating routine tasks. For digital news outlets, AI unlocks a range of capabilities: enhanced personalisation, dynamic paywalls, automated transcription and translation, content moderation, and advanced analytics.
The New York Times’ former CEO Mark Thompson led its digital transformation journey over the last decade. It now clocks nearly six million digital subscribers from less than half a million when he first introduced a “curiosity-driven” culture where his team actively tested and learned from digital experiments. Realising the future of digital news in India will hinge on similarly enlightened corporate leadership committed to a digital-first approach, and experiments with language and technology.
Thompson also believes that news is not about headlines and hard news stories; it’s a sophisticated cultural object. In our context this means that traditional media mustn’t give in to fallacies. It must instead adapt and respond to prevailing realities.
Our society depends on its ability to transform. The authors are with Koan Advisory Group, New Delhi. These are their personal views.
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