 very important points and exactly a month before this we had a forum of TV journalists and we were just talking about television you know at one point print had this challenge that TV had broken the news and what do you carry next day and then it used to read like you know you had already read it you know one how did print navigate that change and added value to the news that you carried next day how did that happen you also said that you know TV just rumbles around six big stories and on a great day otherwise it's like a two story you know they will run the entire 24 hours because the nature of the beast is that but do you also agree that TV generates the impact and that becomes the agenda for the next day okay this is not a TV versus print I'm just trying to understand can you hear me yeah you know I have a slightly different point of view if you look at most news channels and even the specialized channels they have two kinds of information one is information that is based on real-time so if you're a business channel for instance stock market information is real-time you obviously can't get it the previous day you get it as it happens and TV channels do it the same with stuff that is happening right now so right now for instance if there's an accident outside our hotel one of the best media to capture it will be TV if they have like you know a crew and they get what is happening but by and large if you look at the substantial stories that TV plays out in the course of the day you've already read it in the morning's paper so rather than print follow TV the unfortunate thing that happens in our country is that TV follows print when it comes to the big stories so you've already read the stories and maybe this is because again this is not a print versus TV thing some of the smartest people I know work in TV but maybe it's because they don't invest adequately in research maybe it's because they don't invest adequately in specialists who can tell them you know these are the areas that you need to be looking at so a lot of TV journalists I have a feeling end up looking at the morning's paper and saying like hey this has happened and we've not really covered this we should this is an important story and and we need to start looking at this and and that is exactly what happens and you know there are countless examples to this especially with an exclusive story and and you know the good thing is print still as when you invest in good journalism and you invest in good journalists and you're willing to invest in allowing them to travel and spend time on stories you will get interesting investigations you will get interesting exclusives and you will get good special stories and these are the stories that then you know TV takes and usually because you know this is a very bad habit in our country and usually run it as if it's their own story giving no credit to the original person who did it but you know that is part for the course you know you can't expect people to be better than they are so it's the cycle has actually been reversed in this country you know and digital is you know it's it's like on big cesspool I know that mask this morning put out a tweet where he said newspapers report what is on Twitter today right to some extent yes but a lot of times Twitter amplifies what is in the newspaper and then takes it and builds it and people engage over that news and everything else and this is ideally not how it should be because ideally it should be the way Roohale described it the news is broken on digital media TV shows you the news and discusses various aspects of it and print and print gives you perspective it gives you reinforcement right and and that that is in an ideal scheme but but given the fact that you know many of these platforms are not functioning to their ideal requirements the truth is actually very very different I request the people at the back to be silent I can just hear the whispers and you know as you as you mentioned you know we see a global phenomena let me name it of course like we have to give this example of New York Times and we always hold it as an example of how it turn around the way we look at print you know in terms of a business model and then we have this compulsion because our business model is the other way around so we have to our news is different that is a large part of it do you see the Indian context changing somewhere down the line because of course print has a certain impact a certain context which will be missing on digital on television but what how do you see the print story unfolding in India making it more relevant kind of you know making its growth possible do you see newspapers going the New York Times way in terms of successively you know building a business around the biggest advantage that print has not just in India anywhere else in the world is the fact that print unfortunately is still the only medium that believes in newsrooms and it's the only meet only journalistic medium which believes in shoe leather reporting it believes in the importance of reporting it believes in the importance of getting people to where the stories are it believes in having specialists and beats and everything else TV does not so irrespective of whether you are looking at an Indian television channel or an international television channel you have to look at how many reporters they have unless you know it's someone like BBC or something but but you know you have to look at how many reporters they have and and the factors print in most cases and if you take the Indian example it's very very glaring because TV channels invest in anchors they don't believe in investing in journalists and they don't believe in investing in reporters they have anchors more than they have reporters and and the aspiration for everyone in TV unfortunately is to become an anchor I don't think anyone wants to be a reporter and without reporters what journalism are you really going to serve but to answer your questions I know I know everyone keeps obsessing about the New York Times and the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal and I think it's very very important to understand that especially when you're talking about business models all business models have a temporal element to them they have a time element to them they have a time dimension to them so all these channels all these examples that we spoke about New York Times Wall Street Journal Financial Times they started off at a certain period in time if they were to start trying to do the same thing now I'm not sure the business model would work a lot of it worked for them because you know historically you got into a business model you locked it in there and and you're moving on from there so let me give you this you look at the Financial Times a lot of the Financial Times subscription even the digital subscriptions still go to organizations so if you're a uni lever for instance which is again based in London you will take I don't know uni lever is a large company I think you'll probably take a few hundred corporate subscriptions to the Financial Times digitally and give it to your senior managers will they still be doing it 20 years from now is my question because the entire generation of managers who you have have changed and and they're not people who will probably get their information from the Financial Times I have no idea where they'll get their information from but so I a lot of these business models are working because they happened at a certain point in time so to long-winded answer to your question will it work in India at this point in time it won't even work there so there's no way it's going to work here so for it to work here I think you need a new model for India just like you need a new model for journalism of course and there are models that will work but and I've said this countless times before a lot of things I'm saying you know people who heard me before will probably think I'm repeating myself but at least I'm being consistent right there is the big digital news conglomerate in India is still waiting to be built no one has built it yet the big traditional media companies are still struggling with their models we have our challenges we are struggling with our own challenges but the big digital new age media conglomerate in this country is waiting to be built our jury member Sonia saying she is here thank you for coming and joining us so I have one more question then I open this forum to some audience questions you know India as a country Bharat you know we are you know positioning ourselves globally as a global emerging global power we are the fifth largest economy but our press is reflecting a more domestic you know for the focus in a print focus is more of domestic if you see the world global pages one or two pages my point is how soon do we see our press also having those aspirations of what the country is looking at you know and reflect those you know the editorial reflects it you know that we are also globally this is our voice globally how when do we see that happening in a at a bigger level I have a vague understanding of what you're asking I don't think I've completely understood so if I'm wrong you have to you know correct me halfway through our challenges are primarily domestic right I mean and I think Rohail's question in some ways is he's looking at me and asking me why we are not cheerleaders right that's what you're asking you know not only no my question is not global if you look at say again I'll go to New York Times you know they also have global they will say what's happening Iraq what is happening in Saudi what's happening in Dubai they will have a lot of focus on those you know countries as well but our newspapers don't have global focus the coverage of global news is insecure how does that improve and kind of you know reflect that we are also what you call a strong voice in the global scheme of things okay there are multiple ways in which this can be answered okay so let me start we all have to get real at some level right I mean we are doing very well as a country but our per capita income is around $2,500 right the per capita income of a country whom everyone has beaten up including my newsroom Canada is $54,000 right reflects in the fact that many Indians want to leave India and go and live in countries like the UK Canada Australia for for better living conditions the social and economic indicators the standard of living all of these are far higher right so the challenges are very significant so our focus has to be primarily domestic because our challenges are primarily domestic to the extent that international news is relevant to us it gets covered across platforms it gets covered in print it gets covered in TV it gets covered in digital but our challenges are primarily local and we have very significant challenges we've uttered some of them very well right we've pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty but pulling them out of poverty is the first step right next step is to move up we are still according to the World Bank classification a lower middle income country and the reason why we are a lower middle income country is only because they reclassified the middle income countries to bring the bar think down a little bit so we just moved out from the lowest level to the next level so our challenge will be to take our per capita up to $5,000 or $6,000 the thing that makes India unique probably more unique than any other country in this world is within India you have these pockets of phenomenal affluence so within India for instance where you take the per capita income of let's say Germany or the UK both Germany and the UK per capita income will be close to $60,000 within India you have a population of 18 to 20 million people right now whose average annual income is at that level so you have a significant market which is already there and over a period of time this market grows so you are catering not to one homogeneous market irrespective of whether you're a media company or a company selling cars or a company selling soap but you're selling to a very very very heterogeneous market where the divisions are very stuck so some people in India actually live in the first world a lot of us in this room are quite fortunate because I think we're all inhabitants of that world but there are equally hundreds of millions of Indians who live in the third world and I think you know there has to be progression everywhere so the challenges are primarily domestic so the coverage for us has to be is primarily domestic we'll take two questions and I request everyone to please lower the volume because let's go for a audience couple of audience questions yes please well the gentleman wish for this fire side fire side chat to turn into a collective interactive session so I must request you to kindly raise your hands with the questions and we shall please introduce yourself here can I request people at the back to please be quiet here very good morning to you all Mr. Sukumar you rightly said the TV news are going down to the line there are a lot of questions on that if you see any channel 90% of the news only on the crime no quality news is there only crime and these news we can't sit see with the family yesterday it was a world hard day you just see you're the witness how many channels focused on that subject I think no one just a small line news was there the matter of prices gone 250 rupees per kilo 300 rupees per kilo every channel was showing I think sir has got the question crime unfortunately is a very important a lot of people are interested in crime right I mean if you look at the metro editions that we run in Delhi Gurugram Noida Ghazi about Bombay Pune people have three obsessions there are three things that they are obsessed with more than anything else and I dare say even in the South you know if we had an edition in Bangalore these are the three things that they would be obsessed with the first thing is traffic the second thing is civic issues especially garbage collection you'll still be surprised at the number of emails I get about garbage I mean and of course we put our people on it because it is a big issue our cities generate far too much garbage and we have no idea what to do with it the third thing is law and order or crime so there is no harm in covering crime I just think that what we have to do is to ensure that there are a lot of important things that are happening and which people need to know about and and it's important to cover those things equally and these are in a variety of domains for instance last week the environment ministry pretty much removed the protection that grasslands get in this country and grasslands are a very key part of the habitat for a variety of reasons is that something that people need to know about of course it is something that people need to know about it needs to be explained to them so your point is well made you you need to broad base it but like I said the challenge in broad basing it for especially for TV channels is probably going to be the economics much more than anything else right you just talk about no so we will take offline no we'll take more questions can we take one last question yeah you can you can meet sir offline yes sir hello sir I'm an MC I am C students sir I have a question sir so we know that easy has less viewership than Hindi news channel with least viewership and sir as per the business magazine sir we know key only the busy who obsessed with business or economy news read only the business generals and business magazines sir can we say that economics generals and business related generals only confined to the people who doing business and doing nothing to impact or improve the people the mass in general sir and what's how you perceive it sir to inform them or to impact them impact their lives how how you think we can do more for the mass in general okay if you want to rise in journalism you should not use so many serves right I mean don't keep calling people sir all the time okay I think what we are realizing and this is probably making it extremely challenging for young people like you what we are realizing is that these days most newsrooms including mine and I'm sure that's true of many other newsrooms expect their people to have a certain level of proficiency across topics right I mean they need to understand a variety of things and then business and economics is certainly one of them and it's important and you mentioned TV channels and I think especially in TV it's very important because you are on screen and you're explaining something which you'll only be able to do if you really understand what's happening so I think everyone expects a certain basic level of proficiency so while I did advocate specialization earlier on I think it's equally important to sort of be versatile enough to have a certain basic level of proficiency across a variety of disciplines and in India this includes pretty much anything right I mean sports is such a big part of our lives in this country sports coverage and not just cricket coverage I mean increasingly a lot of other sports aren't coming into you know coming into the limelight I think people need to understand what's happening across a variety of areas and specialized perhaps in one or two right my last question we will take it there are students here of course once they complete they look for jobs and you know what are the important things they need to keep in mind if they're tomorrow knock at your door with their CV I mean what is your advice your message to the students who are present here journalism students well it's already too late right see there the world you have to learn how to put up with things because I think the and I'm giving you very practical and pragmatic advice okay journalism in India in the first few years of your job will look like a horrible thankless job with respect to of where you're working you respect to whether it is a print newsroom or a digital newsroom or a multimedia newsroom or whatever else because you are at the very bottom of the pecking order the work seems hard the salary seems like a pittance and a lot of people can't cope with stress now this is true across proficient when people leave college and they start working the first thing they have to learn is how to get used to work life because college life is different from work life some people of course never grow out of it out of being in college but you have to get used to a job you have to get used to the rhythm of what is required in the course of your work and put up with it for the first three four years and learn as much as you can because you know I think that's how you get into the group what I noticed happening with a lot of young people who enter journalism is that they get dissolutioned very quickly which is very easy to do right because this is true even in it's not just true in India it's true everywhere until five six years ago I used to run a business newsroom and and we every year we used to hire from Columbia and I remember the Dean there telling me once that he was very upset that the best and brightest students were not getting jobs and they were going and working in e-commerce firms doing listings right so when you're working in a digital newsroom a lot of you who are in entry-level jobs will be taking stories from here and there curating them giving them a smart headline putting them out but I still think you'll be learning you'll be doing something it's very easy to get dissolutioned with that kind of thing so the only thing I'll tell you and I'm not going to give you these lofty words of advice I've told you everything else before in my speech it's to just put up with it for three four years give your organization enough time to give things back to you it's another problem with this generation you guys are all far too impatient you have to wait for a few years to get what's your do and then you know you can start making a mark but instead most people get hassled after six to eight months in the job and and they jump from this treadmill and go into this other treadmill called public relations makes no sense thank you thank you Mr. Ranganathan for joining us it's been great talking to you thank you sir