The Quint, Swarajya, The Wire and Scroll.in are among the new launches that rub shoulders with Newslaundry and The News Minute. Most of these websites are less than three years old. These are in addition to the online versions of mainstream newspapers and television channels such as Times of India, The Hindu, Dainik Jagran and NDTV. Then there are the standalone online brands such as Daily O from the India Today Group and Catch News from Rajasthan Patrika.
Most of the new websites have small armies of reporters. The Quint, a mobile-first website, has 80 journalists who cover politics, sports and entertainment, much like a newspaper or news channel does. It was formed in March this year by Network18's founder, Raghav Bahl, and his wife Ritu Kapur from the Rs 707 crore they made while exiting the group last year.
More than half of the largely young audience for these websites comes from the mobile phone and social media. But they are not all reading fluff. Across the board, founders and editors tell me that long, involved and high-quality pieces get good traffic numbers (See "Online portals seek a new face of journalism", Business Standard; November 3, 2015).
Can they change the discourse within the Indian media? More importantly, can these experiments fix the broken business model of the news business? The entry of dodgy investors is the single-biggest reason for falling standards in the news television industry. Lack of training, indifferent media owners, aggressive advertisers and ethical compromises are the other major causes of worry in the overall news industry.
Globally, ownership structures have proved to be key to creating a news brand that can invest in quality journalism and is editorially protected a la The Guardian and BBC. Some of the newcomers are experimenting with these. The Wire, for instance, is run by Section 8, a not-for-profit company. "We wanted to be independent of conventional media investors and the baggage that comes with them," says Siddharth Varadarajan, co-founding editor of The Wire. Scroll.in is for-profit, but has been invested in by Omidyar Network, which describes itself as a "philanthropic investment firm".
Ken Doctor, president of Newsonomics, has been tracking the print journalism industry and its metamorphosis in the digital world for over two decades. I asked him about the impact original content websites such as Quartz have had on the news market in the US. Doctor reckons these websites lead to a "profound enlarging of national news comment. Sites such as Quartz and Business Insider have found new space in national/global markets. Both have tamed digital economics - produce once, distribute endlessly - to their advantage. Both have created large audiences. In their audience analytics, they can now slice and dice that audience for advertisers, and have brought Fortune 100 advertisers into the fold. That success is emulated, to some degree, by The Huffington Post, Vox, Buzzfeed and Vice".
Doctor is, however, not as categorical about their ability to create a business model that sustains quality journalism. "For the most part, this journalism is additive. It's not all what we'd call 'high quality' by traditional standards. Rather, many of the new sites adhere to the high/low philosophies of many legacy newspapers, serving up the important-to-society stories, alongside the endless pet pieces and videos. But, overall, national quality journalism is richer."
Going by the lessons for the entertainment business, a sustainable online play for high-quality journalism is possible only with pay or through subsidies from some other part of the business. Netflix could invest tens of millions of dollars into House of Cards because it is a streaming, pay service. The gripping Game of Thrones is possible because of the $15 and more that HBO charges viewers in the US every month. In news too, pay warriors such as Financial Times and The New York Times are among the few brands making any headway with digital revenues.
In India many of the new websites have a page or a banner ad asking for donations and/or subscriptions so that they can keep the news free of advertising or advertiser interference. But largely, for now, original content websites are just that - a nice new set of options for the Indian news audience. Their ability to create a sustainable news ecosystem is a work-in-progress.
Twitter: @vanitakohlik