why print media is still relevant in India

By A S Raghunath

Aam Admi in India is not a global citizen who has easy access to information that empowers him. Imagine him to be from Jhumri Talaiya and India’s best of GDP is coming from those roots.

1. Print in India is an uncomplicated means of individual empowerment. The more the information is on common man’s personal life’s issues, the more empowered he becomes. Print is local, hence it is a tangible means of his empowerment. My aam admi is also as local as the muffasil reporter, whose reports he daily reads, is. Both of them take good care of each other’s empowerment. TV news on the other hand can rattle the Parliament and the nation but it cannot move the individual life of a common person, unless he has fallen in a deep pit or is self-immolating!

2. Despite the fraternity’s doom prediction for the print media in India, our own 21 newspapers brands have made it to the Top 100 global list [basis circulation], according to a WAN list. Of this, five are in English, Six in Hindi, two in Tamil, Two Malayalee, one Gujarati, two Telugu and one Bengali Newspaper. If world newsprint demand forecast is any indicator for the global growth area for the print media, while North America, Europe may have been on sharp decline, but Latin America, South Africa, Australia and Asia are on ever-rise. Asia’s consumption base, which is larger than most continents, the newsprint consumption is up by 13 per cent and is on ever-rise.

3. The pulp version of his news and information delivery is within easy reach of a common man. It costs him less than a cup of coffee, it is also door-delivered to him every morning and the subscriber is entitled to get the entire month’s supply on credit! No advance payment is ever demanded. Moreover, to keep him engaged in reading, media houses also reward him! Does this happen with any other media options in India?

4. If printed news is the first need in the enlightened mankind’s mornings in India, this is also the first luxury that a ordinary man affords himself as he moves up the ladder of social status. Print is also aspirational. Being seen reading a daily in the morning is still considered a more civilized habit than sitting in front of a TV and watching a news channel that hardly allows you to digest anything. An argumentative Indian is best served by reading a topic in the morning on which TV anchors debated last night with eight highly opinioned panelists, whose banters left him completely confused. My common man’s Random Access Memory works faster when he reads and stores it in his hard disk!

5. Take a look at the forces that drive country’s GDP today. The consumer power has shifted base to the more aspiring people residing on the country side. And they are the ones who are ringing in the cash registers for all product categories across the board. Mobiles, durable goods and the other FMCG products categories are finding newer consumers with enhanced consuming frequencies. And print is poised to move in that direction to reaping the newer growth. Advertising revenue stream therefore has to follow where the consumer is and not where the advertising fraternity is headquartered!

William Powers, the author of Hamlet’s Blackberry had said, ‘Paper is the most successful communications innovation of the last 2000 years, the one that has lasted the longest and had the profoundest effect on civilization. About his book he said, ‘Hamlet’s Blackberry is not about circulation or ad revenues not even about journalism or strictly speaking, about newspapers! It’s about the material that newspapers are printed on – Paper’. On the question of future of newspapers, he had said, ‘It seems to me that the question of whether newspapers have a future is related, in a very related deep way, to whether the paper itself has a future!’

The pulp occupies mankind’s mind and heart space. Be it crisp hard currency that gives you supreme confidence or legal papers that affords you security. Or be it a tiny booklet called passport that allows you access as Global citizens, or even the hard copy of your appointment letter that makes you feel more secured in an era of pink slips. Or that neatly folded bundle of joy that you eagerly await every morning for your Random Access Memory’s fill. Pulp and Newspaper are here to stay, dominating your mind space even as you read this on your tablet or computer screen!

A S Raghunath is a senior print media brand consultant based in New Delhi NCR.