The Piteous State of The Online Newspaper Websites
The story of the great Indian newspaper has been around quite a while. However, news nowadays is not the same as it used to be years ago. No more waiting for that 9 o’ clock news or for the next day’s paper to find out what happened. Today, people want news to be delivered to them as it’s made, while it’s being made. Welcome to the 21st century.
There’s a strange parallel on two fronts. On the one hand, there is a growth of literacy. This directly correlates to more people wanting to gain information, figure things out. In a growing economy, that would explain the growth in the readership of almost every newspaper. On the other hand, there’s the rising rate of net literacy. Due to this, more people have begun to rely on the Internet for their news. With RSS, Tweets and every bit of information delivered to you; updated every second, who wants today’s news delivered tomorrow? Without tags, the option of a search or the ability to rely on multiple sources simultaneously?
Today, almost every Newspaper, whether it’s focus is daily news, sports, finance or Page 3, has a web portal, some even complete with Social Bookmarking (Tweet This!), RSS Feeds, a Twitter Account and Facebook Connect for comments.
These sites have been around for over 15 years now. Which is the focus of an Afaqs! article I read today, on how the newspaper industry is steadily losing revenue on their sites. They state “In the last 10 years, online advertising has grown from virtually nothing to Rs 850 crore (source, GroupM). The share of newspaper websites in this pie is estimated at only about Rs 175 crore”
In comparison, print media has been faring excellently. Between 2000 and 2010, the ad revenue of the print business has gone up more than 3.5 times while that of TV has done even better, growing more than fourfold. Radio and out-of-home have emerged as vibrant media in the same period.
This is skewed when we compare it to the west. The problem there is that with the development of 3G and mobile and high-speed internet, no one really wants to sit and read a newspaper. Which would also explain why e-readers like the Kindle flourish. It’s easier to read on the computer because information is not just faster, it’s refined and better.
The question the Afaqs! article looks to answer is this : Should Indian Newspapers be online at all?
A lot of people recommend that we should learn from the West. Let’s look at some perspective shed by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. He wrote a guest article in the Wall Street Journal titled “How Google can Help Newspapers”. The subtext “Video didn’t kill the radio star, and the Internet won’t destroy news organizations. It will foster a new, digital business model” . The benefit of the Internet is obvious : News is tailor-made, customised, refined, and from multiple sources. Through content-relevant advertising, there is a small chance that the eyesores present now will be ones that you’ll actually want to see.
This explains how Newspapers in the West are performing pretty well. (Not in terms of income, but in terms of popularity). The Online version of the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times are very popular. In fact, in the recently released iPad, one of the benefits of the iPad was that you could view the entire front page of the NYTimes (unlike say… your phone which has a smaller screen).
Does that work in India? Apparently not.
A few stats from Afaqs!: In spite of having been online for a decade or more, most of the newspaper websites – barring a few honourable exceptions – are still small. Most of them do less than 10 million page views per month and only a handful get past 25 million page views. Even assuming a (generous) ballpark monetisation of Rs 100-200 per thousand page views, a site doing 25 million page views would earn Rs 25-50 lakh per month or Rs 3-6 crore per year – too small to be of interest to any newspaper company. (Just to provide perspective, the largest advertising-based online company, Info Edge, owner of naukri.com among other sites, generated revenue of Rs 245 crore last year. In other words, it earned more than all the Indian news websites put together.)
Let’s try and look at some of the reasons :
- Internet Access – What’s the Rush?
- Competition from other sources online
- Lack of a well defined revenue model
Internet Adoption in India has not been as high as could have been expected. The rate of growth of Net literacy and net adoption is feeble when compared to the number of people who actually buy a newspaper. Almost everyone in India over the age of say 40, would prefer to read a newspaper as opposed to news feeds or the online version. Why? Because, they’re just not used to it. It definitely means something when the world’s most anticipated handheld device showcases a news website. How many Indians actually go online to read the news? How many use the Internet for anything more than Searching and Communication? Though Mobile Internet is growing, it is not as common in the West. Hence though the newspaper sites exist, nobody really visits them as much. Hence, the role model adopted as in the West fails spectacularly. There, in the 1990s, everyone was in a huge rush to go online. Especially newspapers. Here, it is but recent that newspapers have begun publishing advertisements of their own websites. Even the video ads that you see of the newspapers, or the billboards across Mumbai, how many of them actually contain the website address in bold? Urging you to go online? How many newspapers popularise their mobile versions? Read the news as you go to work?
In the West, newspaper circulation has decreased, online activity has increased. The problem they face – bloggers, news aggregators. The problem Indian news websites face? The newspaper itself!
Let’s now look at the competition. Online media in India is growing at a phenomenal rate. But the problem with online advertising is that there is a lot of competition. Like in the stats above, why advertise on a newspaper site when others get far more hits? Now, the revenue generated is directly proportional to the hits. Hence if the hits aren’t sufficient, the revenue isn’t. Also, raising the ad rates will not help. Because there’s competition from other tried and tested sources. The Physical Newspaper for one. In the Print Industry, the Newspaper reigns supreme. Ignoring the weekly an monthly magazines, there is only infighting within the industry. In the Online World however, there is stiff competition, from blogs, from job portals, from social networking sites. Whichever delivers the most number of hits wins. And unless you DRIVE people to visit the website, the online ad revenue is not going to go up.
Let’s now consider a viable model of revenue. The West tried free information. It backfired dangerously. With so much free information available, there are millions of those who’d copy that data and share it. With so many sources to go to, the probability of people reading the news on your site, looking at the ads and/or clicking on it, decrease EXPONENTIALLY! In fact, the recent Google / Rupert Murdoch face off was because these news sites believed Google was leaching off them. Google’s response : we’re responsible for driving users to your content! And though Google allows you to make a modification by which Google won’t scan your websites and aggregate them, the result of this could very well be a drastic reduction in the people coming to your site for information. And THIS, is not excluding the hundreds of news bloggers, who pounce on an article, add more perspective and publish. So, something that is an hour old has been refined, critiqued, sent to the dryer and the prize goes to the one who provides the best perspective, not necessarily who strikes first.
In India, a lot of people aren’t online. Statistics indicate that less than 30 million a month visit the Internet for news (again, source : Afaqs!) . So, from the other one billion, there will be few who will make a fuss about paying for news. Especially if you found out one day, that instead of reading the paper for 3 bucks a day, you had to pay just 1 buck a day to read it on the net, would you take it? Mind you, this assuming you’re not used to the era of free information and free sharing.
NOTE : THE NYTIMES is seriously considering a payment model. In fact, come June 2010, all News Corp sites will be de-indexed from search engines and will adopt a preview cum payment option. The WSJ and the Financial Times already adopt this model.
Will this work in India? Possibly. In the next few years. Once people are comfortable with making online payments. Once people adopt the Internet on a national level and flock to it. Once Internet access becomes fast so that turning a page is no longer faster than loading a page.
What about a non-subscription model? What if, you’re asked to pay 10 paise per article? Would you do it? Would you at least consider it?
The Afaqs! article suggest something very sneaky, and very clever. NRIs don’t have the option of buying newspapers like Indians. They are also likely to be more used to paying for stuff online. Why not charge them? Unlike Indians who have widespread access to Indian news, through 24-hour news channels or the physical paper, they have to rely completely on the Internet. And most would prefer something like the Old Ye Newspaper as opposed to Twitter.
Dainik Jagran (20 per cent), Mint (25 per cent), Business Standard (28 per cent), Hindustan Times (40 per cent), The Hindu (60 per cent), Malayala Manorama (70%), Divya Bhaskar (72%).
The percentage in brackets is the percentage of visitors who access the site from across India.
But what about Indians?
To drive Indians to access News Channels, it needs to be more than just “News”. There are few advantages a website can give you that a newspaper can’t.
- Interaction with the audience
- Live feedback
- The centre-page op-ed can evolve to conversation
- The Opinions sent back in by readers can reach a wider audience. (I have already noticed this in some of the Hindustan Times news articles – a lot of people are very vocal about their comments)
So how do you do drive people to the Website?
- Publicise it through your strongest forte (your newspaper). Because the winds are changing, digital will eventually beat print, though the change might take years in India. Until it happens, early adoption is irrelevant.
- What is relevant is how well you adopt it and adapt the standard HTML/PHP page to a platform. Hence, Interact! Make the page dynamic, interesting. LiveMint for example offers Podcasts and heavily publicises its blogs.
- Start using social media effectively.
- Ensure that the online space is not JUST for news – it’s as much a part of Active Journalism as the newspaper.
It is sad that the 4th point needs to be mentioned. A lot of newspapers borrow heavily from the same source. In fact, so much so, that often, the exact article can be found across all of them. (I know this because I subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds and the redundancy is irritating, especially when you’re hoping for more insight). This will NOT be true in Print Media. Ask anyone who subscribes to over three newspapers. Newspapers would never dare irk the wrath of the reader by copying stories exactly .
So, the final verdict?
Be Innovative
Get yourself a USP
Embrace the Nascent Media before it reaches the Peak of the New Media Craze
Evolve… or Die!
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A good view of the industry Siddarth! There are some good point which can help news websites a lot. However, its like fixing small cracks because you can’t fix the big one.
Google’s Revenue in India is well over 400 crores!! They have a wonderful technology which not only enables a person to seek relevant information, but also serve them relevant ads! Not only is the consumer happy, but also the advertiser. But who is ultimately suffering? The content providers who actually provided the content to the user! In a way, Google is leaching off Ad revenue with content provided by others. Google is basically powerful because of competition between content providers trying to increase their traffic. However, the increased traffic is not helping them earn higher revenue. This is something major content providers such as News Corp are realizing. Remember, Internet as a medium is still 10-15 years old only and any industry goes through a lot of changes in the first few decades before coming out as a mature business model.
The risk that News Corp might take can turn the tide against Google. Assume, that all major news provider follows News Corp and de-index themselves from Google. Suddenly Google might not bring up the expected search results expect for Wiki, Twitter and Blogs results. All three aren’t very reliable. That’s where Bing is looking forward to hit Google – Share revenue with content providers by making themselves exclusively searched on their search engine. Every time a person clicks on a link, Bing makes a small payment to the content provider. Bing won’t be able to make revenue as high as Google with this model, but it can crumble Google. Search brings 99% revenue for Google, where as Microsoft turnover is 3 times Google’s with lot of cash reserve. Microsoft is also a major content provider with MSNBC networks.
Secondly, with eBook Readers and iPad coming into the picture, the content provider can find a new way of reaching to consumers and make money without the need of Google.
what baseless bullshit. seriously couldn’t even complete reading the ramble (cant even call it an article or story).
1. the moronic rambling mentions how newspapers in the west are doing well?!! are you out of your mind?
2. charging users for content?! is this still 2004 or something?
3. do you know how many times NYT has tried charging, then made access free and now they’re considering charging again?
newspapers in general are screwed coz their monopoly over distribution is dead. the thing that gave them power (reach, distribution, readership) is what has moved away (due to free, ease of access/portability & specialized reporting) and this is particularly true in the west.
the reason why indian newspaper/media sites are screwed is coz they neither get tech or UI. pages take forever to load, you can’t find the right content, layouts suck and/or there are ads ALL over.
Lastly – since when did articles on afaqs become the gold standard in references?!!! do your own goddamn reading/research man.
@Pranav,
I understand my “article” has very little information. It’s more of views and opinions.
Secondly, I re-read my entire rant. I didn’t find any reference to newspapers in the west doing well. I understand revenues are falling drastically, and I have also mentioned quite early that “In the West, newspaper circulation has decreased, online activity has increased”
I did however mention that they are exceedingly popular. nytimes.com is the 25th most widely visited site in USA (alexa)
The concept of charging users for content is not very new, neither is it really that strange. The debate of Premium v/s Freemium has advocates on either sides.
Personally, I believe that there is a strict difference between news and journalism. There is nothing so blasphemous about charging for articles that do take effort and background research (unlike mine).
I understand that News has evolved from “breaking” to a lot more, which is why it might be moronic for people to charge for content which is easily accessible elsewhere. For example, would you not pay your stock broker for tips, even though there are thousands online who’d gladly give you opinions? It may not be a strict analogy (I hope you don’t pick on it) but the concept is similar.
Newspapers are screwed? I would prefer to state it as “newspapers will be screwed” (eventually).
You are right about the last point (though I did quite a bit of independent reading). The Afaqs! article merely initiated a thought process for which I felt they deserved credit.
@punit
Glad you liked it. With regards to your comment on Google Search crumbing – I would disagree. I understand it could affect them in the long run, but as if TechCrunch’s data and article is to be believed, a site like WSJ gets around 25% of it’s visitors from Google.
I doubt all news content providers would pull their support from Google, unless of course, they insist that everyone linking to them do the same. For example, even if Tech stories are broken, I enjoy reading more than just the “breaking news”. A lot of blogs provide a lot of insight and opinion.
But you’re ABSOLUTELY right about eBook readers and iPads. It never crossed my mind as to the impact they could have. Thanks
(of course, I suppose it’s not very pertinent to India, and ebook readers will never be as popular as the browser)
@siddarth i quote from your article: ‘This explains how Newspapers in the West are performing pretty well. (Not in terms of income, but in terms of popularity).’ so hence i conclude that you did not even re-read your article properly.
and no the concept isn’t even vaguely similar – there is a HUGE difference between something that helps me make money (which is why FT & WSJ paywalls work well) and regular (insightful) news.
would you be willing to pay for chrome/firefox or facebook/twitter or gmail/yahoo mail or even tripadvisor or google search? if not, then why nytimes? aren’t the other websites/products also made by hard-working people (engineering, research, etc.) who deserve to earn a living by charging for their product?
fact is that old media in the online space HAS to find new revenue streams with ad revenues as the base (as has been always) – paywalls, paid subsciptions will work on a very limited level and if overdone will probably kill significant traffic hence reducing ad revenues at the same time.
oh and by the way another really disappointing thing which makes me wonder why i am even replying here: On Jan 20th (your article is dated 1st Feb), NYTimes decided to go for paid subscription beginning of 2011 – do you know how silly that sounds? you could’ve just googled for ny times paid and this would’ve been the first link
And just in case you forget, I quote from your article: ‘NOTE : THE NYTIMES is seriously considering a payment model.’
~please stop writing or start researching buddy.
@pranav : again, please note : popularity. NOT INCOME. NYTimes is the 25th most popular site in the USA.
I agree that WSJ and FT paywalls work because of them catering to a niche audience. (Which is what I meant by the Get a USP point)
On the question of paying, a lot of people still pay for software. For example, a lot of iPhone Apps are payed for and people do buy them.
If you can buy a newspaper, then why not pay for the same content at a fraction of that price?
The risk that we undertake by refusing to pay for content is the possibility that 1. The system can’t support itself just by ads and hence is forced to compromise on quality. 2. an infusion of ads which would make the experience very very frustrating.
oh, i am sorry about the NOTE thing. I did read the article. Linked it to the older venturebeat one. I acknowledge my mistake.