 This is an interesting discussion because we talk about Digital First and India's Digital First is very unique compared to the rest of the world where we still have the traditional platforms going very strong, if not growing as you said. So if I have to start straight away, I want to ask Milind, I want to start with you straight away in the interest of time. Is India's Digital First approach different from the rest of the world? Should it be different the way it has to be contextualized in the way our traditional media functions? Just want to start with it from you. So Rohil, thank you very much. You asked the question, I'll speak in Hindi if you don't mind. So you asked the question, how is India's Digital First approach and what is right or wrong? So first of all, you should see the audience sitting here on their mobile phones. This means that everyone is consuming their content on digital. So I think that when the audience has already gone on digital, so now we are discussing whether we should be digital first and what is the digital first? That put your content first on digital instead of say a newspaper or a television station. So I am saying that we are past that stage. Now I have been listening to this digital first for the last 10-12 years. I think it's time has passed because the consumption is getting more on digital and as a journalist, as a newsroom, we have to all change and do the content where our audience is. Now how the India's approach is different versus others is that in India, most of the newsrooms have created a different newsroom for digital instead of those newspaper journalists working for digital. And a television journalist is also a newsroom and a digital newsroom. So this is unique because the other good examples in the world, the journalists of the newspaper or the TV journalist, they are producing for various platforms. They are not just producing for one platform which is say TV, radio or newspaper. So I think our approach is unique because as you pointed out that newspapers still continue to make money, TV still continues to make money. So we thought why not invest into a digital newsroom. That's why we are different than others but I don't think this can last long or the publishers for a long time can afford to have three different newsrooms, one for text, one for video and one for digital. Praena is being on digital like enough like he said in this room people are on digital. Is that digital first enough or there is a filter needed for the credibility? Is speed the only factor needed in being digital first? Well speed is one of the factors because you see if you look at it, it's not, if you look at the digital first phenomena, it's not anymore a nice to do thing. It is a necessity so it's not as if you started a disruption because the industry decided to do something. It's just that the consumer has changed. You know the consumer preference has changed. The consumer is a ubiquitous connectivity, wants ubiquitous connectivity. The consumer wants portability, they want to carry their content with them, they want to carry their world with them. You know they cannot be fed information which is yesterday's or three hours delayed. So obviously speed is a factor because the new Gen Z and Millennial profile does not have the patience or the tolerance to wait for hours to be delivered content. But more than you know if you come to the verification benefit, yes it's very important and that is where I think there is a difference between the legacy media houses and the new ones because the legacy media houses can actually capitalise on their existing verification mechanism. For example in our own group we of course have the normal verification mechanism because we have regional reporters and we have a very big network of stringers. But we also had to do a little bit of fine-tuning to our systems and processes. We had to add a news verification desk on the digital which is the NTFake news desk. We also had to do a digital intelligence unit which constantly a data intelligence unit which constantly works on data to verify stuff real time on the ball. So I think you know it's not one versus the other. It is speed plus the verification which is very important in the digital scenario. Before I come to you Lorena one more question for you Millen. A famous known TV journalist told me that digital is because of television because as soon as my show comes on air you see the trends going on Twitter. I mean how do you explain this kind of thing? So I mean I still I mean there is what Prena works. So television thinks that Twitter or a Facebook or a social media is a second screen. So people are watching something on TV and then they react on another screen which is their mobile screen. That is the phenomena. But I will not be able to pass a judgment on like who is driving whom. Because I mean when you heard in the previous panel that anchors before they go for a show they are tweeting that you know watch my show or you know promoting their shows on Twitter which means their audience is there. Otherwise you know if their audience is not sitting directly in front of the TV then they don't need to promote so much of their show on the Twitter which means that their audience is sitting there. Another point is that in the morning Navika I saw her clip and she is saying that you know one of her clip has gone viral and how many hundred K on Twitter it has got. So I think I mean somewhere even the measurement of success for television anchor has become that how much it is being watched on Twitter or a YouTube or so maybe their content is not changing but their consumption is clearly people are watching that TV on the digital. So I will I mean and we again heard Bhupen this morning that how editor would get angry over reacting to the Twitter trends. So these Twitter trends were not created by journalists. They were created by maybe political parties or by the influencers. So I mean it's they are feeding into each other. I would say that the TV is feeding into the social media and the Twitter is feeding into the mainstream media. I mean I don't know what is your view. But pray now once again. So in the newsroom tells us the real situation inside the newsrooms how how important has a digital piece become for example a couple of days back in the morning we saw a Delhi police video and the entire narrative the agenda was set by that one video which was out on Twitter. How important is this piece for the traditional power of your organization. You know we might want to kind of duck our head in the sand and say we are still all powerful and we are the media and we decide the national narrative and the news narrative of this country. But I beg to differ because it is the time for citizen journalism now. And you know when you see most of the news agenda for the day for any newsroom today and I can say this with a lot of confidence is that it is usually decided by probably a small clip which has gone viral where somebody has recorded some atrocity in action or somebody has recorded some celebrity or a politician acting in a particular way. If you were to go through the realms of conventional media I think that would not have even figured into the national discourse maybe seven or eight years ago. But now when you sit in the newsroom for the meetings you first take a look at what the citizen is trying to tell you and I think that's what should be the prima facie objective of a media house. They should be looking at what the citizen is saying and what they are trying to tell you and then build a narrative around it rather than having a top driven thing where I have a message this is my story of the day you like it fine you don't like it walk away. Now it is more like building all that conversation which is happening on various platforms into your broadcast especially. And it's a two way street you know we have lots of packages which the digital creates which find their way into the broadcast or the prime time of the day. So I think it is the time for citizen journalism and I think it will be nice if the media kind of bows and says yes we accept that. Lorena my first question to you. So Lorena also was part of a hundred year old publication Argentina if I'm right. Give us the outside perspective. How is digital conversation digital first conversation shaping up outside India especially in your country. Okay well first I'll give you a brief of an example of the hundred years newspaper. So in 1898 my great grandfather founded a newspaper it was called La Nueva Provincia which means the new province because at that time he was not only an entrepreneur but a visionary. At that time they used a newspaper to get territory. Imagine there was the most important newspaper in the south of the province of Buenos Aires perhaps you have heard about Patagonia. It's like the Kerala of Argentina. So it was a really important newspaper. The record in selling were around the 1960s, 1965 and 1970s but after that television came up to a sin. So at that time they realized that people were expecting fresh news and in a daily publication was not enough. So they start like working also on television and multimedia but after a few years internet came into a sin. So they again need to adapt to the reality of the needs of the consumers and at that time was quite hard to like manage all these different platforms and the reality was as a regional like newspaper the worst issue that they faced was regarding to advertisement. Of course you cannot be a competitive regarding to Google ads. So after a few years working on the internet like level let's say like we start the online platform on 2005 was the first experience the pilot project but the real one was in 2013 but three years ago we sold the newspaper. That was the reality. And now the family business is regarding to optic fiber and internet. India has a very different story still, right? India continues to be a different story. I mean with all due respect what's happening there. I have another question. So what has also happened with digital is first or second or third but digital first word is that all these issues of fake news and what the words we heard WhatsApp University and all it's also a product by product of digital. So while being practicing and advocating the digital first strategy you also have a huge responsibility of coming to terms with these issues and how do you kind of own this responsibility in the digital space and come to terms with it and correct it. So I mean digital is being blamed for the fake news but I think what has happened is that fake news to my mind always existed in the society. It has got a better amplification now you know because of the connectivity of the WhatsApp and no, I mean I have heard this so many times but I mean I will ask all of you are we better off with the connectivity or without connectivity? So we have seen places in the country where I mean internet... Better connectivity and more fake news or less? No I'm not talking about it. I'm saying that while the fake news is being... But what do you want? Internet is now closed for an hour or if we don't get the signal then we get worried. So we are blaming everything for the fact that the fake news has increased because of the digital. In my opinion, the fake news was always in the society and it never used to work. Saeed was sitting there in our Indore and there was a story that people started saying that it's gone, it's gone, it's gone and all the shops are closed in the city. So people later asked what did they do and they said that the fake news didn't work. The thing is that there are pamphlets, newspapers, all these things. Now since he got a platform, he is getting amplified. So it's not like there was no fake news earlier. He needed to fight it and as Praena said every person is fighting. Every platform, every responsible platform is checking the facts. By the way, checking facts without any news, without a fact check, we shouldn't hide it. I mean our responsibility as a journalist is to hide it without a fact check but since there are some western interest groups who propagate it, whether it's related to health or political, then you can debunk it. Beyond that, and I feel that the other platforms, social media platforms, I read some news yesterday and now they are saying that this story is fake. They will label it as fake news. They haven't done anything yet. So this is the problem and we should fight it. But we shouldn't say that anyone should kill digital. Praena, what are the unique challenges of digital first approach that you have to face on an everyday basis in your newsroom? I think the biggest challenge probably which we saw coming our way in this decade was the advent of social media as a distribution platform for news. And to millions point, I think that has become one of the biggest pain points even for the social media platforms now because while they thought they were democratizing news and putting news on their platforms, they did not realize that it comes with a lot of responsibility. And if you don't have a credible name or a credible team working behind that news dissemination, it actually led to all this fake news nonsense that we are seeing today. And though I work in the area and I should not be saying this, but using social media as a news consumption practice or lifestyle is what has led us into this thick mess right now. You see what happens. There are Jamia videos from the police. There are Jamia videos from the students. So the journalist is completely left rudderless to understand and has to spend triple the amount of energy and time on verification of those videos and speed is of essence. You cannot say that all the channels have gone live with this but I'm going to hold on. But we do have to hold on. We do have to hold on sometimes to the news before releasing it because there is immense challenge in just putting out everything that is coming your way especially for broadcast. I think it's a big, big challenge. So I think social media has realized it and as Millen was saying that there are ways and processes they are building into their algorithm which says this is fake news checked and this is verified, this is authenticated but there was no need for that if they would not have gotten into a space where they did not have the right experience and relevance. Lorena, your case going from print to jump to an online and what kind of challenges or opportunities have you witnessed since then? Well, actually I always like to think about possibilities. Currently I'm in India because I joined as a speaking person from Latin America a global peace campaign which is called Jai Jaggar and we make this as a global campaign just because of media just because of the possibility that this platform provides us. Yes, this campaign is a work from India to Geneva in the framework of Mahanmagandhi values of peace and justice but now we are using these tools to make the information spread all around and to make a global campaign. Millen, for you and Reena the difference is that they have a lot of advertisers which you don't have. Does that help your digital first thing in any way? Is that an advantage of being in that position? I don't think that advertising has anything to do with the digital first if you ask me because as a journalist as I told you the user has already moved to digital. Advertisers are also moving. Whether your revenue model or your business model is public funded or... Also the kind of content you will create and they will create but also fundamentally differ because there are certain different pressures working in the newsrooms. I don't think so that you know there was a clickbait which was there five years ago but now everybody realizes that the clickbait cannot take you far so people are looking at the engagement of that article when people click how much time they are spending and that's how the algorithm are also being built. So I think because now this is not something just an extension or something new for India today it was a magazine, it is a TV and it is now on digital. So the experience has to be for everybody has to be the same. So it's not that you can push something else on digital. So maybe everybody was doing it five years ago but nobody is doing it anymore because people realize that the brand experience has to be same at all the platform. So you know just to coming back to your point that we journalists might say that you know it is because of the advertising it is because of you know political pressure but as a journalist my job is to get digital first. You know like I have to get my digital skills in place. I cannot have any excuses that I am doing it because of this or because of that. The fact is that users are changing and we need to change. Prena, virality is like very important now this term you know this will go viral they were saying in the earlier panel also. Does that drive the digital first content also in newsrooms like how do you... Virality is a concept which kind of transgressed from the digital space into the television space. So it's not the other way around. It was when people started looking at content and when you got the first hand feedback of something you know instant two-way communication was what digital brought to the table because television was a very... monologue right and it wasn't meant for the kind of Gen Z and millennial audiences we are talking about now. They want to engage, they want to interact, they want to tell you they don't just want to know about things they want to be known. So you know you will see that on the digital platform the engagement level is such that the moment you put some content you get instant feedback and you realize that okay the audiences are kind of playing with this, toying with this idea today we want to take it on to television. So you see we have come a long way from digital first to the repercussions of digital first because we are feeding a lot of information from the digital and social media into our broadcast which is a flip and that's where we are different from the rest of the world because we have so much of content happening on digital which is going back on to the broadcast space. So you know... So before I come to you my final question to all of you are there any best practices of digital first that you would like to sum up all of you one by one? Okay? Okay, so you know the way we use the term digital first is it's really abused and it's misused because for us journalists I think the most ostensible part of digital first is that put every content in the form of visual medium and digital medium and you know audio voice video, right? But what I really feel and I've been in this profession for more than two decades and I've seen this transition in the making this disruption in the making and digital is not just the content digital first is a methodology it is a culture in an organization and your content has to talk back to your marketing your sales, your teams within the organization it's a mindset change it's not just content we really it's a misnomer when we talk about digital first as content because to me it is a complete mindset change of the teams who are working on your thing you know he was talking about how television and digital and magazine teams have to be different you know the biggest challenge for the internet group was to actually change the mindset of a magazine which was already the number one so what do you go and tell the team that you are number one, why do you want to get into digital, why do you have to do that mindset and breaking into that culture of a team is digital first for a company well I'm not going to answer as a journalist but as a human right advocate for me what brings digital first is a huge opportunity to improve as a society I feel that we can we should start thinking in accessible digital first if I speak in Spanish you won't understand this means that if I talk you in Spanish you are not going to understand me in India there are 25 million deaf people but in media there's no subtitles to make the information accessible for them if I speak to you in Spanish but I include a subtitle you can access to the information it's as easy as that small actions can have a huge impact regarding to accessibility the size of the font, the color, the contrast we all use social media we need to include alternative text in each photo that we post there are a lot of opportunities that this digital first can bring to us regarding to accessibility and to make information accessible to all of us I would say I have worked in the newspaper I have worked in TV and now digital I can tell you that the golden rule remains the same which is your story whether you have to have a good story to tell if you don't have a good story to tell then nobody is going to click on it or watch it that's point number one the second point is that how it is different than say television and newspaper is it is all about engagement if you don't talk to what people are reacting and you have to talk back to them so in television you just do your show and you go away in digital people come back to you and they will give you a comment then you have to clarify there whatever you talk to them so engagement is the golden rule of digital it's not about the so we Indians are very obsessed with reach that story has reached 1 million or 10 million at BBC we look at how many people got engaged with story how many people have commented on it how many people have liked it so I think engagement is what should be the real matrix because otherwise in this country so many people will meet you but how many people are engaged I think that mindset has to change from the reach to engagement because you will have good engagement will give you good revenue also it's not just about great I am on time