 So my first question would be because I would start with what you are as a professional at News Minute because it's a very interesting title because I have not really come across like what are you, what goes inside my mind of Raghav Malika and she said, hey, I want to experiment something today, you know, I want to take this idea and how you approach. So imagine for the first time someone told you, hey, newsletters are important, you're not the believer because then you're being counterintuitive to what you think. So that's my question for Raghav. I know you said, okay, I was a non-believer and then I became a believer because I have to increase the membership. So to answer that question, first of all, I made up that title. What made you believe to take that view? Right, so yeah, like I said, I made up that title because so basically I've been a journalist all my life, most of my life. In between I had a crisis of faith because I was working with Times Now and I was working under Arunabh Goswami and I was like, what the hell am I doing with my life? So I decided that I wanted to quit journalism and like do other things. So I was pottering around for a bit. I worked in policy for a bit and I did the lamp fellowship. I was working with an MP and all that. And then I worked with an NGO for a year. And then I realized that this is sort of where I belong. I belong in a newsroom. I came back to the newsroom because that's who I am. I am a journalist. And once I came back into the newsroom, I've been heading editorial for TNM. I've been heading the edit desk. And again, as a journalist, I'm an editor. I'm not much of a reporter. I'm not a guy who's going to go out on the field and talk to a bunch of people and come back with stories. I'm the person who's going to sit in the newsroom and say, okay, this is how we can structure things. These are what the headlines can be. This is what our editorial takes should be and this is how we can get things across to people in the best manner. So I've been an editor always and membership was new to me. I mean, I've been sort of wanting to do new things for a while. Of course, that happens to a lot of people, I guess. And TNM has been great. In TNM, anybody, it's not like if you're stuck in a role, you can't do anything else. It's not like if you're an editor, you can't write or if you're a writer, you're never going to experience what editing in a newsroom is going to be like. We're a small organization and our leadership is flexible enough and innovative enough to say people can't be put into boxes. So our USP is South. Our USP is South India and we do well mainly because we understand South India. It's not like we have people sitting in Delhi and Bombay and thinking of the rest of the country as satellites. So that is a problem with so-called national media. So once we got onto the membership journey and I decided, I mean, it was decided that I would head it because like I mentioned earlier, I was on a fellowship with Google and Columbia on newsroom leadership and my project was the membership project. And so I went to New York last year at Columbia University and we met all of these people, including Rafa. Then everybody's like, oh, newsletter, newsletter, newsletter. Oh my God, newsletter, newsletter. And I'm like, I don't know anybody who reads a newsletter. I don't personally know anyone who would say, I'm going to take 20 minutes out of my day and read this thing. I don't know personally anybody like that. And then there was this, I mean, we are, when you are talking to people in America and Europe and they have a very different view of things based on their experiences. And there is a tendency for the Westerners, like Americans, especially to say that, you know, whatever's happening in America is happening in the rest of the world, which is not true. Which is most of the times not true. So when Americans say that the newsletter is the most important thing, I'm like, okay, maybe it's the most important thing in America. But is that the case for my audience? Is that the case for my readers? Right. And that's a question that we all need to ask because, you know, the minute you say that every reader is the same, then you fail. Then you don't need to exist. If every reader is the same, then the Republic can take care of all of that. Right. Like if every news consumer is the same, then times now can reach out to all of them. That's not the case. That's not the case. So all our audiences are different. TNM's reader is not the same as Hindus reader or buyers reader. I mean, there are overlaps, right, but you need to understand why somebody comes to you. And that was something like, you know, for me, for the longest time it was, is somebody going to come to me to read a newsletter? And if they are, then what is the newsletter that they're going to read? It cannot be like everybody else's. Right. My reader does not want the same thing that a scroll reader does. Then what is it that my reader wants? That is the first question. So yeah, I decided to make up that title, my designation. I went to my editor and I said, Daniel, you know, this is the designation that I want. And she's like, yeah, okay, fine. Right. So it was for me. Yeah, I wanted, I wanted a fancy designation. First of all, that was the reason. Secondly, I think it's important to sort of, I mean, through this, through my learning all of these years, it's, it's important to, especially as a small organization, innovate all the time and to not get stuck in any kind of a mold. And of course, that means that we're going to make mistakes. Of course, that means that, you know, you're going to try something that doesn't work, or you're going to try something that, you know, gets criticized a lot. But how do you sort of accept that and like move on and like, you know, tinker with it and like correct it. Right. So that's what you know, so your typical, so your typical profile is that I understand it's like a lot of editorial strategy for sure, because that's what your core job is. That's what you're trained as. And then you went to Columbia and you learned newsroom leadership. Now my where I, where I find things very interesting is okay, you're doing your core job with or without the title. But when you say special projects and experiments, do you have something, do you have a list of things from where you went and studied more about this because a lot of innovations are happening in Columbia. A lot of people go there and learn and like Benoy came from there and is working and probably money control and he's doing some great work there. How India lives is another project which came from Columbia. So for me, it's like an interesting insight like how you guys go there and pick something very interesting that you picked up newsroom leadership and then you come here. Do you have like small, small list of trends and phenomena you are like keeping your eye on it. Hey, this is what I should be. This matches my audience profile here. Let me try this out. So I was in Columbia for exactly two weeks and no one week. Sorry, I was in Columbia for exactly one week and then they took us to Mountain View, which is like one really easy village in the middle of nowhere. Right. I don't like those places like I like cities. I'm a city person. So Mountain View was a bit of a thing but Columbia I was there for exactly one week. So it was a fellowship program that Google and this one is doing like I said. But in terms of trends and I mean it's great right you have that exposure to go and like listen to what you know skift is doing or listen to what CNN is doing and all of these guys and they're all trying different things. Everybody is innovating. Everybody is like you know talking about this and that and for me like you know sitting over there with people from Asia Pacific like my other fellows were from other newsrooms in Asia Pacific like Japan and Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and a lot of legacy newsrooms and they say okay you have like you know your product guy should do this, your tech guy should do this and I'm like you know we are a 35, 40 member organization and most of us are journalists and we don't even have an in-house tech team. So when you talk about structures like that when you talk about like you know big media structures is small media going to have those same structures. No, right. Does that mean that we can't succeed. No, we all multitasked right I'm I'm trying to learn how audience acquisition works which is not my background right but does that mean that I can never learn it. No, I will learn it right. So in that way you know to sort of understand that just because this the system thinks in a certain way or the industry thinks in a certain way is that the only way to succeed more. So those are some things that you know were insights for me but other than that trends like India for instance like newsletters when you say email newsletters. I have an email ID that I just use for signing up to a bunch of things and then I never open it. And I'm guessing that's not unique. I'm not unique. I know a lot of people would do that. So then what is it that people open. I know that our ecosystem is a WhatsApp ecosystem. But can I capitalize on WhatsApp. No, I not really because legally WhatsApp will like kick me out if I try to do that. So because they don't want it to become like a spam pool, not that it is something else right now. But you know, it's it's difficult. It's it's sort of difficult to see okay what is it that is going to work. I mean, you have an idea, but is the idea in that form the right idea for you. And that's always been our thinking and our question. Right. So, yeah, I mean I don't know if I answered your question or even got it. You did answer my question because it's a very fluid thing you pick up something on the move and then you read something you find something. See, I I've never been to Columbia or maybe I will never go there but for me to tap into what you guys write what you guys do is something which helps people like me to understand. Oh, these are the trends. And I do that. My next question is you talked about audience acquisition and you are learning it's a challenge for you and you learn so much more about it. Everyone is multitasking. Can you give a brief snapshot of a typical user or typical member of the news minute and or how it has evolved or how it is evolving or how you want because it's also about how who do you want to recruit as your reader as a user as a like you said I don't want to be on the on WhatsApp. I would rather want to tap the community elsewhere. So what are those insights about your audience if you may share some of it, which you can share that will be great. First of all, I want to be on WhatsApp. I really want to be on WhatsApp but there's nothing. I mean, maybe has geek and all of you guys can like this is out for us but like you know there is no tool for me to use on WhatsApp which is not like completely expensive. So expensive that is beyond our reach. Because it's all made for like e-commerce right all of these bot sap rules are made for e-commerce. And WhatsApp doesn't want me to like the like hundreds of phone numbers and like you know messages people individually. So how do I use WhatsApp. That is my question right I want to be on WhatsApp frankly. The second question. I mean you asked about like you know who is the DNM member. As I said we are very early in our membership journey but basically I mean if you look at TNM or any news website right and when you look at your unique users every month. Most of them right the whole bulk of them are people who've clicked on a link on social or on WhatsApp or on Google and they've come to your site once and they've gone away. So these are people who are flybys. They've come they've read something even the brand name doesn't register for them. They don't know who the NMS they've never heard of us before or maybe they've heard of her but they don't you know care about us and they've moved on. They probably read like one story in two months or three months and these are people who are flybys right. I'm not asking them to become members. I know that they're not going to become members. That person who's read a breaking news story is not going to become a member right but then there are the other leaders. These are people who know TNM right who followed us for years now. Who know Danya or who know Anna or Soumya or any of our like reporters Priyanka or Prajwal because all of our reporters are people who are engaged with our readers on Twitter or Facebook right. So they know us they know the kind of coverage that we've done right whether it is the Kerala floods or Chennai floods or whatever and we are an organization that has been on the ground right. We are not like you know sitting in an office and saying that oh from here we will figure out like what has happened. No our editor in chief was on the ground when the Kerala floods happened or when the Chennai floods happened and she was there in the middle of it and we were our newsroom people in the newsroom were coordinating with like you know relief and rescue and you know sending out messages and all of that stuff right. So we were doing that work and we were doing that work with people who wanted to help as well. And those are the people who care about Kerala or Tamil Nadu or you know other states in South India they care about like you know what is happening over here and they care about the fact that media houses sitting in Delhi and Bombay don't even turn and look at what is happening in South India when something big happens right because they are bothered about Kangana Ranautar whatever else that they are bothered about right. So those are the people who will become TNM members right. They know they've read something or they've been part of something that TNM has done and they understand why we exist they understand that we are important they understand independent media is important and a voice from the South India is important in English right we're not even claiming that we are the voice of South India nothing like that I'm saying we need coverage of news from South India in English that is unbiased that is independent that is not Kangana Ranautar whatever right. So do you have people do you have like is there a break up like how many people from North how many people from South how many people from the US because that would be interesting to know that we are I read news very regularly because that that gives me that perspective which at times when Hindu does not. So I don't have that kind of a break up for instance I mean the NRI membership has just started it's like a couple of weeks not even a couple of weeks old right. So we're just starting on that journey we are you know trying to like reach out to our NRI readers and of course because we had like a lot of tech delays we were supposed to launch. In the middle of August then it was beginning of September then it was the middle of September and it was like almost after the middle of September when we actually like launched that's always not a great time to ask people to open their wallets right I mean everybody's struggling at the end of the month. So it's now that we are sort of like you know pushing more and asking people to like sign up and stuff like that. As far as our India members are concerned, like you said Abhishek I mean thank you for being a leader of PNM and we've had other people from other parts of India as well who are coming and telling us that you know we need PNM because you guys talk about this out and you know you have unbiased news over there. And before we launched membership for both India and NRI like I've spoken to personally a lot of people. For research right like why does somebody come to PNM, why does somebody want to support PNM right and those are the points that we hear again again. We support you because you're unbiased right so I'm going to continue supporting you unless tomorrow you turn around and do something drastically stupid. So those are learnings for us or we support you because you give us the stories that nobody else gives us. We support you because you know one of your stories mentioned my hometown which I haven't seen in news media ever. So we have that ground presence and they know that you know when something happens we know that you're going to be on the ground or when something big happens we want to know what TNM is saying about it. And it's humbling and it's great to sort of hear that from our readers right and those people are going to be the ones who become members. In terms of abroad definitely I don't have any data. In terms of India most of our readers I'm guessing are South Indians who are living either in South India or elsewhere like most of them I would say. But of course there are people from other parts of the country who want to know what is happening in South India and who care about like you know what is happening in different parts of the country. Without having to like you know depend on this nationalist sort of rhetorical television Delhi Bombay bubble kind of stuff. So those are our readers and these are people who have known us like I don't think anybody is going to sign up to TNM because they've seen us once. No those are not the people who are going to sign up right. That people have engaged with us before. They know something about us that makes them believe that you know we need support. So you've pretty much covered for me audience I mean the common enemy which I know about we know for Indian independent Indian newsrooms. One is North India which it thinks that we are the news and we are everything and that's where I live in that part of the world. The other is obviously Bombay Delhi bubble. It's like you think you're talking about something and someone does a dance in a hula loop and everyone talks about that and they're not talking about anything else which is not bad. I love that hula hoop video. So Delhi media decides what should be on the national trend loop and that happens. But what I also want to know and I understand this audience is there. When you talk when you say that we want to cover South India like we have grown up reading Hindu and I've grown up reading Hindu and they can help because those were the two key sources of information for us about the South. Whatever non-North Indian idea of South India we had we had from those two great sources and that gave me a very different point of view than what everyone else had in North India. So when you say for South India because we already were reading English and then the news when it happened. So you have to briefly tell me a couple of things. One, what is the North Star for the news minute when it says South India. And two, what are your editorial guidelines for like broader editorial guidelines which you say this is what even if we put something in the newsletter it has to have a lens of this. You know we can't just write whatever comes to my mind I find it very interesting. I just put it out there and I send it to my audience. Something like that. Okay. So in terms of North Star like we want to do journalism that is for public good. We want to do journalism from South India. So for instance, in the heart stress issue, it is happening in UP, it's happening in Delhi, there are protests happening everywhere. And this is an issue that whether you're living in Bangalore or you're living in Bombay or you're living in Delhi, people are interested in knowing what this is and most people have an opinion around what is happening. But can my reporter sitting in Bangalore do original reporting about what is happening in heart stress? No. Right. So and it would be like wrong to say that I'm going to do it. You're not there on the ground. Right. Similar to sort of saying that you know somebody is going to parachute out of Delhi and drop in on Kochi and like you know understand what is happening with the Sabarimala issue immediately. No, they're not going to. So similarly me parachuting and dropping onto UP or like sort of making phone calls from here and saying I want to do original reporting from there is wrong. Like you can't do it. However, what can you do? You can get voices of people. You can get voices of people and issues around like what is happening and like focus on that. So we've always believed in not not doing this para dropping journalism. Right. We are ground journalists. We do what we know and we do it from where we are. So that is the most important thing for us and journalism for public good. Right. Journalism that is unbiased and we've always like tried to make sure that our journalism news reporting is different from our opinion. Right. People have opinions. Everybody has opinions. We don't believe in this. Journalists are not supposed to have ideologies. Journalists are not supposed to have opinions. No, we are human beings first and we are breathing thinking human beings first. So obviously all of us have opinions, but when you're presenting news, when you're presenting facts, like how do you sort of keep that straight without like playing this balancing game of putting a scientist versus an astrologer. Right. We don't do that. We don't say that, you know, somebody's talking about science and then no, no, we have to balance it. So we'll get an astrologer. No, we don't do that nonsense, but you know, how do you present facts without like sort of bringing in like opinion sideways and our readers respect us for that. And we make sure that when we are putting out opinion, we say this is opening. Right. We say that this is by this person. In terms of what is our lens of looking at things again. I believe that if there is an editorial meeting with five people and then all five people agree on everything that it's a really bad editorial meeting. You're not going to get anywhere. Right. They have to be disagreements. There have to be different points of view. They have to be like fights, because only that means that, you know, there is thinking going on that people are actually like, you know, considering things from like multiple points of view. So yeah, in terms of somebody might write an opinion piece on the NM that I might not agree with at all. Right. But then it is an opinion that somebody does want to put out and it's not something that is like for us. It's not something that is inciting. Right. And it's not something that is derogatory. It's not something that is abusive. So if those things are followed, then if it is an opinion that is like worth sort of putting out even if I don't personally agree with it. Or our editor-in-chief doesn't personally agree with it. Like we do sort of say, okay, this is an opinion and then we are putting it out with all the right disclaimers. Right. This is a personal opinion. Whatever. So yeah, that is the way we've gone forward. The next question is about two very imperative things about your efforts. One is audience development. What are the key things you do? Like you can list down these are the three things we do to develop the audience. Like we are using social media or we are using paid social. We are, you're running ads or you are reaching out to people through other partnerships. How are you developing? So that part of the strategy, which is how to develop that. And the other part of the strategy is how are you using like today's technological tools like analytics to analyze. Oh, this is the kind of content people want to read up on. Or these are the things which we should focus more on and less on how you discovered something like that in the journey of developing your audience. Sort of audience acquisition when we talk about like member acquisition and stuff like that. It's social is a tool that we use for it. But I don't think that's the only strategy that we can have. We also use our content to drive home the point that, you know, people need to support us. So whenever we do a good story, we'd ask the reporter to like, you know, probably make a small video and like embed it and talk about like, you know, why we want somebody to become a member or we put like a graphic inside it. And yeah, we talk to people, we talk to our members and tell them that, you know, maybe you can invite other people to become a DNA member. So those are the ways of acquisition. And then of course, this is a question of retention. And because again, it is a membership and it's not a subscription, right? So it's it's easy to say that we're doing a membership and not a subscription, but to actually sort of be on the ground doing that is like very difficult. Like how do I keep my members engaged? How do I make sure that a person who's like, for instance, I'm a I'm a conjuce person, right? Like I've before this year never sort of paid for any news on the web. And like, you know, sort of in the in the last 12 months and in the last year, like sort of thinking about what is happening with the independent media in India has made me feel guilty about the fact that, you know, I need to support people as well. So I've signed up to a bunch of places this year. I've subscribed to scroll, I've subscribed to caravan, I've subscribed to a bunch of places, but main reason driving that was a feeling of responsibility and a feeling of guilt. Right. So next year, am I going to go back and like sort of renew my subscription for caravan. The question is how I used caravan. How I logged in and like, how many stories have I read in caravan? That's the question that I'm going to ask myself, right? Like as a, I'm not saying as a person who has a lot of money or who's just, you know, able to sort of have that heart to give. I'm not that person, right? So then, why am I going to pay caravan or why am I going to pay a scroll? My question is going to be, have I used it enough? Am I getting like value out of this? Right. So obviously for a TNM member also, that is going to be requested. I paid TNM the first time because yeah, I like them. I want to support them. I want to support independent media. I feel guilty or I feel like I need to be more responsible or, you know, whatever reason. But the second time that payment has to happen, that reason has to be solidified. Right. They have to see some value in what they're getting. They have to use something to be able to say, okay, this is worth my money. So that is like, for instance, one of the things that we want to do with newsletters or with our forums. We've just started our forums, TNM forums where people can come and like, you know, talk to each other and talk to us, right? Talk to TNM about different things and, you know, have a chat and like different issues or, you know, play silly games or whatever it is and see the value of like, you know, being there. So that is difficult. That is absolutely difficult. I know, I mean, I'm sure you guys like know about this like much more than I do. But in terms of like saying that I'm going to like form a community is difficult work. And that's what we're doing to sort of retain our members. And we hope that it will work. I mean, yeah. Now, since we've covered most of it, and the audience would love to know what are the things which like I could apply for my newsletter or I could apply because some broad principles of learning they remain the same. So can you like help us with few ideas about what really helped you with regards to your content building like content strategy, what are the things which you would ask your team member to do or what are the references what are the things that you look up to. And what is it that you would want to practice or anyone who is wanting to write a good newsletter about news, what should they be doing irrespective of the geography or the democracy. What are your learning if you could help us like few takeaways which we could use on a day to day basis. The first and most important thing ever is the subject. Right. I mean I don't know I mean I'm sure everybody knows this, but I think it needs to be reiterated we all like spend so much time on the 1000 words of the 800 words or whatever it's going inside that newsletter but under it opens your newsletter. There's no point. Right. Unless your subject is sort of interesting enough or catches their eye, unless that happens then your newsletter has not been opened. So I think that is the most important thing. The second thing like we did a bunch of like which which Htt which here's the thing. We did a bunch of AB tests right we did a bunch of AB tests on timings on subjects on sender name. The way of the week should be send something like all of this like we did a bunch of tests to see like you know which is and obviously there's no perfect answer right. Some things work and some things don't and then you have to like analyze that and see what is the best possible scenario for you. Right. And then tests on like you know how many batches do you send out your newsletter and like, you know how do you make sure that it doesn't end up in spam or it doesn't end up in promotions. And then you tell people that you know was like go and like open it or like you know whitelist us how do you tell them that and then there are other things right I mean you're using the same mailing list for doing a bunch of things like me do events as well. So if I'm doing an event or I'm doing a cause and I'm saying you know you can donate to this and then people are like a why are they spamming me. I'm going on. So at what point does it become spam at what point are you putting off your readers so that is something that we have to think about as well and from a content point of view. I think we need to understand like why would when there are so many newsletters right like so many newsletters are there from everywhere in the world and it's not like a physical newspaper where you can't subscribe to something that is happening in Spain or Nigeria or you know UK like you can subscribe to anything that is happening in bed right I subscribed to a bunch of American newspapers. So when that is the case why should someone come to you. Why should someone want to subscribe to your particular newsletter and that's a question that is always at the back of my mind. So why is someone going to come to TNM to be the newsletter and if I'm going to give them the same thing that is on the site all day and if they read on the site all day then why should they subscribe to the newsletter as well. So those are all questions like firstly what is it that you want to achieve are you trying to make them click on links to go somewhere else. Is that the goal right basically you want to click the link and like you know get more numbers on your site get more like you know views on your site is that your goal or is it like an additive newsletter that you want them to like spend some time there you want them to like engage with that content inside their mailbox or is it something else right like you know is it a mix of the two. So what is it that you want to do with your newsletter that clarity has to be there. Like a lot of times people come back and say give me feedback saying you know you put a lot of these things and I never get the time to like click on all of these links and read all of them. And I'm like OK great but is that what I want you to do. Is that why I'm sending you the newsletter. I have to take that feedback I have to take that feedback that is coming from somebody because of course they're giving you that feedback because they care. They're spending that time to give you that feedback then you have to think about it and then you have to say what is it that I'm trying to do and are you doing that. What is it that I'm trying for you and is that happening. We can all say that you know I put a lot of effort into this newsletter I spent like a week on developing the content for this or I spent so many hours like you know doing research for this. But at the end of the day is that fulfilling something some need for your leader or is that just like more of the same thing. So basically yeah that is what I would say is like the most important thing again content. How is your content like differentiated from other peoples. And there is so much that is happening when there is so much content out there. How are you different from everybody else. Why should somebody subscribe to you. And that's if you have that question in the back of your mind all the time then I think you should arrive at an answer at some point. So what's your like favorite newsletter than the TNM obviously and then you say that you subscribe to scores of them once which you end up reading once in a while which are those ones which you like really like that you look forward to. I like try this by pointer Institute because you know it sort of gives you like a bunch of tools even if I don't like use all of those tools like it's it's great to know like you know what is it that people are coming up with. Newsrooms around the world are like sort of using I like try this. I like long reads sometimes like I again like I said like I want to believe that I'm the kind of person who will read long from writing. But you know once in a while I like to sort of delve deep into something and most of the time it's it's not it's it's features it's it's feature ish it's more like you know culture pop culture kind of stuff. So long reads gives you like you know deep dive stories from like a bunch of places in one one capsule. So you can choose to like you know click on one of those things so once in a while I would read something from long reads. Then there is something called them, which is newsletter from Auto straddle, which is again of interest to me, queer issues and stuff like that so I read that. Sometimes then actually from PRS legislative chakshu puts out a daily newsletter called the Kiwi. So basically it's an automated newsletter but it's very useful I feel like you know it gives you all the different opinion pieces that everyone has on Indian sites like what Indian Express has said what scroll has said what fire has said like you know it just has the headline link and the writer's name. And that is like very useful for me sometimes to say okay, these are the different views that are coming on like you know different subjects. So I may not like you know open it and read it every day but every once in a while I make it a point to like sort of go there because then I have everything in like one place. So I like that. Then Rohan's political flicks fix sorry flicks fix I open once in a while and I try to read. Then news laundry has that I keep forgetting the name but I open it once in a while. And a couple of others like, like interest based newsletters like. Yeah, but mainly these, then I've subscribed to a bunch right like I have like CJR, I have New York Times like I've subscribed to some five newsletters from New York Times because everybody wants to be a New York Times leader right. So I subscribe to like a bunch of stuff from this thing. What's it called New York Times right including their love letter and stuff like that I never read them. But yeah, it's like meeting a long lost friend on Facebook for the first time you're very excited oh yes we'll be in touch we'll always talk and then you lose touch forever. And that's what happens with these newsletter I also like you go to New York Times and they flood you with the choice and you subscribe to all of them. I'll eat all of them I'll eat all of it. It's like a good buffet that you want to eat everything but then you're like you're full with my mailbox is spam with you New York Times and then Monday you go and start to unfollow and subscribe all of it I know that. And last question would be you are and I'm really so it impressed me when you say we don't have a tech team but we're developing something and that's that should not be a concern anymore because. You can't say we have our own CMS or this or that it was a thing in the I mean your CMS was your news product at one point of time. I don't think that's a that that gives you an edge what gives you an edge is what you're doing your lens on the your lens is South India and you're coming up with some great content. How are you managing like these four newsletters for four different people now there's a membership element to it because it has to be there has to be some access control to it. If you can like very briefly share how are you what kind of platform you are using members for the newsletter are you developing with someone else if you can share because that would really help. So our daily newsletter one of my colleagues take care takes care of the daily rap that goes out to any subscriber it's not a member only newsletter. So my colleague Haripriya takes care of that that goes out five days a week. Here's the thing is mainly me sort of like no trying to ask people oh please give me an idea or like write about something or you know sometimes I write and it's very difficult for me to write. I mean I'm more of an editor and for me to like actually sit my eyes down and like write something. So but I do I do try and sort of it's a way for me also to like become very disciplined about you know making sure that something goes out at a certain time. And so I take care of putting together here's the thing and sort of writing content for it most of time as well and our providers Mailchimp we use Mailchimp for everything so we use our statistics from Mailchimp to see. I mean of course their geographic statistics suck and they just like tell you oh everybody is in the US everybody lives in the US and I'm like oh my person lives in Kuaibatoa. So that is a problem. But otherwise I mean they have decent sort of analytics on like you know open rates and like you know what time somebody opens something and all of that. And that's important for us. Then with Mosaic which is our arts and culture newsletter it's written by curated by an arts consultant called Shreya. So we are I mean she does it for us she makes it for us. And the daily briefs the TNM briefs which we have just started it's the first couple of weeks or so I've been like doing it myself. But hopefully like you know we'll have like more people to begin with that from next week. So we have some great Mailchimp haters in the community I won't name their name. But we can have like a separate session altogether where everyone who hates Mailchimp they can all get together and really hate it for the entire hour or so. I don't have like you know basically I don't have anything to compare it with. Like I know that such stack exists and our scroll stack and everything but like Mailchimp is easy to use. Like for me it's easy to use it's intuitive in terms of like you know the elements that I want to add I can like play around with it. I don't have to like it's not like a coded newsletter template that I have to like then like you know break my head over like I can just like you know drag and drop elements. So I don't have anything to compare it with if there are better options that are like cost effective and we are on some plan where we are like very cost effective. So that's very important for us like we've always been conservative in terms of money if you've always been a small team. Like you know you listen to Danya and Vignesh they're like why are you guys like spending so much time like you know you should just like launch you don't know how we launch TNM. We were just like three people and we just like launched it like that and it's great right I mean these people have like I mean Danya and Vignesh. I really have like a lot of respect for the fact that they started from like pretty much like just a team of like two or three people and then this is where we are now. And that's because you know there is a lot of courage with the founders and there's a lot of like sort of strength in saying that it's okay we'll make mistakes but we'll learn from them. So that's always like sort of you know the belief that we have in being able to do something right. I mean we get it wrong for the first time the second time because the third time we get it right. We won't make the same mistake twice. So that's our great. So Bhanu Tej if that's the right name I pronounce has a question that is an ideal size in terms of the word count. Raghav Malika which you guys subscribe to all that this is what we should be we should not exceed 800, 1200, 1500 words. Right so it's a very controversial question right. In terms of initially we've had like a lot of fights on a why is it so long and why is it so short and this and that and la la la. And the honest answer is like nobody has the correct answer. Sometimes it might be like a little longer than usual but it's still like works because you know the subject is such that people want to read as much. And of course like I have one of my colleagues and friends Ram he's like you know the main piece it has to be like a hard 600 or a hard 800 and I'm like you know sometimes it can't be a hard anything. Right sometimes it has to be a thousand words. If it has to make sense and sometimes when you're. I mean, if my colleague saw me I was like writing about SPB and you know I tell her no no no hard 800 hard 800 and the feelings don't stop it hard 800 sometimes. Right, so yeah I mean we have rules so to say about like you know hard number of words and stuff like that I break them all the time. So it's it should feel substantial for me if somebody is like paying for a newsletter it should feel substantial in terms of what they're paying for right if they're paying for an insight. Then it should like be substantial enough that they're not like feeling like oh you haven't given me my money's worth. So that is what I would say. Abhishek may I this is Hano. Yeah please Hano please ask the question. Yeah so what I gather is a lot of it is about gut feel I mean like ultimately it's like what kind of what do we go with page one I mean I've been a print journalist all my life so I'll talk in terms of newspapers I've just moved into online journalism. It's like so what goes into page one or what goes where you know that kind of a call right it's a it's a gut kind of feel that you have to have about what the subject would be and how much you're going to talk about it. It's about how passionately you're going to talk about it and who you're addressing and what do you plan to what you plan to achieve by that by the by the newsletter itself. So I mean when you when you talk to like a lot of people internationally on like subscriptions and just the international discourse around like publishing and revenue and all of that like everybody says no just don't listen to your editorial team like listen to what the data is saying and which a lot of tech people also sort of believe in I guess but it is good like advice in terms of saying that you know you have to look at data. A lot of journalists don't look at data. But I would also say that at the end of the day if we are going down the route of I will only give you what you want then we get 24 seven time an hour. Right like journalists cannot like sort of I mean anybody like I'm sure like you've been in like print and you know it's it's not in us to sort of say that you know we're going against our editorial values and stuff like that. Obviously I'm not that doesn't mean that you know the data should not be looked at you should look at data. But and you should like sort of get enough like qualitative feedback on like you know is somebody are most people feeling like you know your newsletter is too short or too long or you know some element of the newsletter is just off like they don't want it. Why are you putting so much effort into it. Right. So those are like conversations we need to basically keep your editorial values but at the same time don't be the person who says you give me money I give you a newspaper then our relationship it then I don't care what happens with that newspaper. Yeah I think he was also wanting to ask like for me newsletters because I know that a lot of people will not just spend spend half an hour in the email like reading it's like within the email experience it's like the pyramid inverted pyramid. I mean I mean you give the top or the you give the nut graph you know that you kind of give them the complete sense of the thing and then they want to move on to six interesting thing at the same time. It's like you're picking a book of flowers the best news and then some nut graph and not just wanting them to go on to the next website. That's been my experience my newsletters are around 1000 words every time I want to keep them to 800 words because I wanted to keep it shorter like Williams answer says that there is no punishment for a shorter sentence word paragraph in the court of the Lord so that's I subscribe to so I mean the fundamentals I mean I'm not a journalist but I am only learning from you guys like the shorter the better in terms of anything I mean I unless there is a specific needs to go long form but newsletter is not the long form. Yeah fair enough and it's not 2000 words. We have we also have another question from very quick question subscription versus membership. What is the difference is very basic. I mean you did say we are not we are not in subscription membership brand please elaborate a bit on that and then we'll just wrap up. Right subscription is I subscribe to Times of India they give me a newspaper I subscribe to Hindu they give me a newspaper. I subscribe to I don't know like any particular product and I get that relationship sort of ends there membership like when you say forget news or forget publishing when you say I'm a member of something. What do you remember of right people are members of Bangalore Club or boring club people are members of Rotary Club right or people are members of I'm a member of NWMI the network of women in media in India. Right. So when you say you're a member of something the relationship is deeper right the relationship is not one of I give you money you give me content. It is it has to be a little bit more than that it has to be a sense of I am a part of something bigger than myself. Right. Whether that is I am a part of the elite of Bangalore and therefore I'm in Bangalore Club or I'm a part of the elite which is doing social good. Therefore I'm part of Rotary Club or I'm a part of a group of people who care about what happens to women in media and therefore I'm a part of my member of NWMI. So like that. So obviously it seems like it's sort of something like completely unrelated to news in that sense. But news is such an everyday part of our lives like you know we are invested in what is happening around the world and news publications are the ones that are getting this out to you. So I don't know if membership can be done by like large organizations like Hindu World Times of India or network 18 because they are too big. Right. They don't have that kind of a connect with their readers. Right. They've always been used to the world culture has always also always been that you know I'm giving this to you. Right. That has been the relationship. I am the expert you are the user. So that has been the relationship for big media all the time. But across the world there are lots of organizations now that are like you know sort of doing membership and that goes with the understanding that you know these are people who are part of your journey. These are people who want to support you. So for instance quickly D Correspondent in Dutch. That is a purely membership model publication and they do unbreaking news. Right. They have like some correspondence work on like you know certain issues and they deep dive into it dive deep into it and they've started in English last year. So from India I think Tanmay Goswami is part of is a mental health correspondent for them. And similarly there is an organization in Bristol which they ran as a cooperative. It was a media organization that ran as a cooperative. So all the members were part of the cooperative. They paid and they could vote. They had voting rights in the organization on the stories that they did. Now all of these of course the the model of publication also matters. Right. Like what if you're doing breaking news and you're expecting like members to vote on things. Is it going to work? Probably not. Right. But at the same time membership is that feeling that you know I'm a part of something. Right. For instance if something happens to me I pay Hindu how much ever every month. Right. But if something happens to me tomorrow Hindu doesn't care. Hindu doesn't know my name. Hindu doesn't know who Raga is. Right. If I'm a member of TNM, TNM cares. TNM cares about the fact that you are a member and you are a part of this. Right. It's not like you know we are going to say oh no we don't even know who you are. You are some unnamed person. No. I'm going to take that effort to you know make sure I can get to know you to whatever extent you want me to know. Right. I want to be able to say that you know these are things that are happening in the world that you may be able to contribute to. And you may feel good about doing that. Or you can tell me you know what is the story that I'm missing. Because one of our members came up and said that you know guys this Prashant Bhushan issue is happening. Why haven't you guys written enough about it? Like you know I don't think you've done enough about it. And that was a big upfall for us. Right. And that is a symbiotic relationship. It's not like we are saying A we know everything we will give you. You take it and eat it. No. It's basically you tell me. You tell me if my recipe is good or bad. And you know I am going to listen to you because you are important to me. And my ideas are going to come from you. Any journalist who says that you know I don't care for what people say is lying. Our ideas come from people. So that is the difference I would say. I don't know if I've explained it well. But yeah that is the difference between membership and subscription.