The IHT has done a deal in India, but I don't know too much about the details.
This piece from Salon only underscores this market's importance. Talk of Mint and aspiring elites, with an editor who once was the editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe, and before that served as deputy managing editor of the U.S. edition, says it all.
Journalist seeking paycheck? Try India
As U.S. newsrooms shrivel, India's are booming. And they're hiring, not firing reporters and editors.
Editor's note: This story has been corrected since it was originally published.
By Arun Venugopal
The U.S. news industry is bleeding jobs. According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 2,400 journalists left newspaper newsrooms last year, either through layoffs or buyouts, leaving the industry with its smallest workforce since 1984. Circulation and revenue are falling across the country, as are share prices: Gannett, the country's largest newspaper publisher, is seeing its stock trade at around one-third its value a year ago; the New York Times Co. is down 45 percent. Classified advertising revenues have dropped 30 percent over the last two years and the last quarter was one of the industry's worst ever.
Just how bad can it get? The American Journalism Review's Charles Layton recently concluded that "we may begin seeing, pretty soon, big American cities with no daily newspaper."
So, what's an underemployed journalist to do? Some move on to academia or cross over to the dark side of public relations. But a few forward-thinking souls are heading to a land where journalism jobs not only aren't disappearing, but are more plentiful by the day: India.
In recent years, India's steamroller economy has diversified well beyond tech and outsourcing, including a big boom in the news media. Circulation has been steadily growing at Indian newspapers, and new dailies and magazines are popping up on a monthly basis. Among the new serious business publications that cater to the economic elites (or aspiring elites) is Mint, edited by Raju Narisetti. Narisetti is the former editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe, and before that served as deputy managing editor of the U.S. edition, which helped him lure several journalists from the U.S.
"Mint has a handful of American citizens in its newsroom, including me," he wrote me. "India is a fascinating country where history is being made in many respects so it is a fertile place for good journalism. Hopefully some of the non-Indian journalists will have a better understanding of India when they do go back."
Foreign journalists aren't the only ones taking advantage of India's growth. Rolling Stone has also launched an Indian edition, following Vogue, FHM and Maxim. People magazine's local edition is launching soon. However, the growth is even greater in the non-English media, in part because rural and small-town India are becoming more literate and have more disposable income.
In broadcast, the change is even greater. As a kid growing up in Madras (now Chennai) in the '80s, I can remember sitting through the sole nightly news program, broadcast on Doordarshan, the state-run TV channel. It was excruciatingly dry and slow-paced, but we endured it because "I Love Lucy" followed. Those were desperate times.
Today, however, there are countless news channels, and the choice can be overwhelming. And while that doesn't necessarily translate into quality -- some channels borrow the frothiest aspects of American cable news -- it has meant new opportunities, and wealth. Indian media critic Sevanti Ninan noted that new TV channels are poaching the best journalists from print by offering salaries as high as $180,000 a year. But all of this growth also means that the labor supply isn't keeping up with the demand.
Enter the expat.
In June five graduates and enrolled students from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism headed to New Delhi, where they're starting reporting internships at the Hindustan Times, one of the largest-selling English language newspapers in the world. I've been in touch with three of the interns, and to my surprise they all said the miserable job market in the U.S. didn't affect their decision to go abroad. But they also agreed that India's media explosion is impossible to resist.
One of them, Michelle Stockman, has been studying multimedia journalism. She e-mailed me from New Delhi, writing that "it's not the tough job market that sent me there -- yet. I decided to go to India because the promised experience just seems tremendous. Readership is skyrocketing, as are profits. The managing editor also said he really wants to strengthen the multimedia elements of the Web site, and there's money available to put into development."
The managing editor of the Hindustan Times is Pankaj Paul, and when he dropped by Columbia's graduate school earlier this year he said he had a lot of jobs available and promised students the sort of assignments and exposure they'd never get at a smaller American newspaper. But the benefits run both ways. In Paul's eyes, the Hindustan Times is getting top young talent who are sharing their skills with a newsroom in transition. Paul himself is the former managing editor at the Wilmington News Journal in Delaware.
"I have met foreigners working at the Hindu, Mint, GQ, the Hindustan Times and Times of India," wrote Scott Carney, a Chennai-based journalist who freelances for NPR, Wired and National Geographic TV. "They all work on Indian salaries, don't speak the language, and all seem to be having a ball. Since there are so many new publications opening up in India, there is a lot of demand for native English speakers and people who can bring higher reporting standards to local papers."
Carney says he turns down two or three assignments a month.
"I pretty much stick only to big investigative stories on subjects that I choose, and leave the daily reporting and feature pieces to other journalists. I have noticed that some American media houses are pulling back their freelance budgets (just try getting an assignment past the foreign desk at NPR these days!). But I bet that freelancers in America are feeling the pinch much more than I am while living on the rupee."
"If anything," he wrote in his e-mail, "I'd like to see more freelancers move to India. There are too many stories to cover and just not enough time to get to them all."
Of course, everything goes in cycles, and Mint's Narisetti, for one, says it's just a matter of time before India's news business cools down and America's discovers a viable new business model. But right now, journalists in India are reclaiming the narrative, after years of seeming as if they were on the receiving end of it, or left out entirely. After all, this is an entire civilization on the ascent, righting itself before our eyes. In that context, journalists -- from India, the U.S. and elsewhere -- serve as the front line of storytellers, even as they are, in this instance, part of the story.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/07/journalists_go_to_india/
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Friday, 8 August 2008
Tuesday, 5 August 2008
The NYT,Film, TV & IHTV
My last post was about Rupes' happiness with the overall state of television advertising.
Indeed, according to the NYT, Rupes is going to deepen News Corporation's extensive presence in Indian media, announcing on Monday that the company would invest $100 million in six new regional television channels there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/business/media/05dow.html?_r=2&ref=media&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Incidentally, here's where Rupes is on India otherwise:
Dow Jones had already announced plans to increase greatly its coverage of India’s economy, one of the fastest-growing in the world. Joining Mr. Murdoch at the news conference, Robert Thomson, managing editor of The Journal, said that the newspaper and Dow Jones Newswires have a total combined staff in India of 25, and would increase that to 70.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/business/media/05dow.html?_r=2&ref=media&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
I don't think the NYT is quite up to that level yet on 'one of the fastest-growing economies in the world'. India interests me. Why aren't I also subscribing to the WSJ, I ask myself?
Anyway, back to moving pictures instead of print and text: a great deal of attention is being placed at the NYT on the Internet - basically if you like good old www.iht.com you can forget it soon, it's about to be rolled into www.nytimes.com
How that will look or work we wait to see.
But given the relatively low CPMs on the Net, perhaps the main focus should be on TV, and indeed film.
What I learnt from a recent article in Variety, and didn't know before, is that the NYT is already in this game, at least partly.
The New York Times has been involved in 15 option deals based on its articles since signing for representation with ICM two years ago,
There is another 'time-related' outfit also interested in film.
According to Variety, Times Inc is moving not just into selling option deals on stories but into the production of in-house films.
"Time Inc. Studios, together with management-production company the Collective and XYZ Films, will produce features and documentaries based on articles published in Time Inc. publications such as Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Life.
The company has identified its first project, optioning the April 14 Sports Illustrated article "Breaking the Bank." Written by L. Jon Wertheim, the feature covers the alleged criminal exploits of Ultimate Fighting Championship competitor "Lightening" Lee Murray, who is suspected of masterminding the largest cash heist in history in 2006.
XYZ Films said it will contribute a seven-figure development fund that will option articles, hire screenwriters and tie talent to packages that can then be shopped to studios. It doesn’t cover TV projects.
XYZ is a production company that finances rights acquisitions, script development and bridge lending. It has sold films at festivals and most recently produced the 2009 Lionsgate release "Love, Pain & Vice Versa."
The venture is being spearheaded by Time Inc. Studios president Paul Speaker whose previous film gigs included exec stints at RKO Pictures, RKO Films and Shooting Gallery. He will be a producer on the films, along with the Collective’s Aaron Ray and XYZ Films partners Nate Bolotin, Nick Spicer and Aram Tertzakian.
While some of the film deals are expected to derive from new stories in Time Inc. mags, the architects also hope to leverage the conglom’s historical assets through archived articles and photos from Time and Life that date back to 1923, including some of the most famous photographs of the last century. The company publishes 120 magazines globally and generates up to 3,000 articles each month; the venture gets a first look at all of those articles.
The deal marks the latest example of a publisher trying to broaden its revenue stream by participating when its articles are optioned for film projects. This recent movement ranges from graphic novel publishers that are routinely at the center of movie deals to the New York Times which has been involved in 15 option deals since signing for representation with ICM two years ago.
Time Inc. will be a proactive partner because of the fund supplied by XYZ, which will house three staffers who will pore over the magazines’ archives to find movie properties. Mag editors will also be relied on to identify in-the-works articles with feature potential. The conglom benefits financially through option deals, producing fees and other potential revenue-sharing on box office hits.
The organizers said plenty of films were seeded by articles, including "Dog Day Afternoon" (a Life article) and "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" (Fortune). James Cameron is developing to direct "The Dive", a Sports Illustrated article about free-divers.
"For the first time, talent has direct access to stories and material from the company that has produced proportionately the finest journalism for years," Ray said. "Before, you had to chase the rights, but now, a filmmaker can sit across the table, describe their plans, and we can be in business the following week. We’re cutting right through studio and other barriers."
Speaker said the editors of the magazines signed off on the venture, all the way up to Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore.
"This was organized at the highest level, to be sure we do this wisely and correctly," Speaker said. "We will have full access and support of editors to identify the best properties to tap into the fund. The goal is to benefit both the writers and Time Inc. The archive was underexploited, and it is a vast resource."
http://www.variety.com:80/article/VR1117990056.html?categoryid=13&cs=1
A good example of the perils of being an early mover: NYT two years-ahead of the curve is selling options on articles; Time Inc sits back and watches and jumps an entire step, or several, ahead, and moves into co-production.
On the subject of early adopters, whatever happened to Alan Friedman, ex-IHT journalist and Italian media star walking off with the rights to use the IHT for IHTV? Must look that up.
I do remember going to a couple of meetings in Rome with Alan about this, and the then publisher getting me to get a mate of mine, an ex-BBC Newsnight producer, to do an evaluation of their programming (his conclusion: amateur hour crap, more or less - I'm sure it's much better now if it still exists).
I don't think the then publisher, Goldmark, shared my mate's report with the higher-ups in NY (and Washington at that time) as I have reason to believe Alan got a steal of a deal, so low was the interest or belief in the potential of IHTV from the IHT's then owners.
Alan will probably end up selling back the TV rights for a fortune, if he hasn't done so already! Not that he hasn't made another one off the IHT's back already.
Now there is a man who was ahead of his time. He saw the future of journalism and grasped it with both hands: ego+contacts+good journalism+need for talking heads and filler for cable channels+brand name of employer = start my own company = money making opportunity. Forget all this silly wages nonsense.
He also reminds me of a great bloke who was the IHT's technical guy once - sorry, I've forgotten his name - who proposed a whacky idea back in c1998/9 to create an IHT spin-off acting as a global ISP. What a fab idea I thought! A community of readers emailing around the world from X@iht.com.
However no one knew or could understand properly what he was on about, a great opportunity went by, and he promptly left the company. So much for foresight.
http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
Indeed, according to the NYT, Rupes is going to deepen News Corporation's extensive presence in Indian media, announcing on Monday that the company would invest $100 million in six new regional television channels there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/business/media/05dow.html?_r=2&ref=media&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Incidentally, here's where Rupes is on India otherwise:
Dow Jones had already announced plans to increase greatly its coverage of India’s economy, one of the fastest-growing in the world. Joining Mr. Murdoch at the news conference, Robert Thomson, managing editor of The Journal, said that the newspaper and Dow Jones Newswires have a total combined staff in India of 25, and would increase that to 70.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/business/media/05dow.html?_r=2&ref=media&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
I don't think the NYT is quite up to that level yet on 'one of the fastest-growing economies in the world'. India interests me. Why aren't I also subscribing to the WSJ, I ask myself?
Anyway, back to moving pictures instead of print and text: a great deal of attention is being placed at the NYT on the Internet - basically if you like good old www.iht.com you can forget it soon, it's about to be rolled into www.nytimes.com
How that will look or work we wait to see.
But given the relatively low CPMs on the Net, perhaps the main focus should be on TV, and indeed film.
What I learnt from a recent article in Variety, and didn't know before, is that the NYT is already in this game, at least partly.
The New York Times has been involved in 15 option deals based on its articles since signing for representation with ICM two years ago,
There is another 'time-related' outfit also interested in film.
According to Variety, Times Inc is moving not just into selling option deals on stories but into the production of in-house films.
"Time Inc. Studios, together with management-production company the Collective and XYZ Films, will produce features and documentaries based on articles published in Time Inc. publications such as Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Life.
The company has identified its first project, optioning the April 14 Sports Illustrated article "Breaking the Bank." Written by L. Jon Wertheim, the feature covers the alleged criminal exploits of Ultimate Fighting Championship competitor "Lightening" Lee Murray, who is suspected of masterminding the largest cash heist in history in 2006.
XYZ Films said it will contribute a seven-figure development fund that will option articles, hire screenwriters and tie talent to packages that can then be shopped to studios. It doesn’t cover TV projects.
XYZ is a production company that finances rights acquisitions, script development and bridge lending. It has sold films at festivals and most recently produced the 2009 Lionsgate release "Love, Pain & Vice Versa."
The venture is being spearheaded by Time Inc. Studios president Paul Speaker whose previous film gigs included exec stints at RKO Pictures, RKO Films and Shooting Gallery. He will be a producer on the films, along with the Collective’s Aaron Ray and XYZ Films partners Nate Bolotin, Nick Spicer and Aram Tertzakian.
While some of the film deals are expected to derive from new stories in Time Inc. mags, the architects also hope to leverage the conglom’s historical assets through archived articles and photos from Time and Life that date back to 1923, including some of the most famous photographs of the last century. The company publishes 120 magazines globally and generates up to 3,000 articles each month; the venture gets a first look at all of those articles.
The deal marks the latest example of a publisher trying to broaden its revenue stream by participating when its articles are optioned for film projects. This recent movement ranges from graphic novel publishers that are routinely at the center of movie deals to the New York Times which has been involved in 15 option deals since signing for representation with ICM two years ago.
Time Inc. will be a proactive partner because of the fund supplied by XYZ, which will house three staffers who will pore over the magazines’ archives to find movie properties. Mag editors will also be relied on to identify in-the-works articles with feature potential. The conglom benefits financially through option deals, producing fees and other potential revenue-sharing on box office hits.
The organizers said plenty of films were seeded by articles, including "Dog Day Afternoon" (a Life article) and "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" (Fortune). James Cameron is developing to direct "The Dive", a Sports Illustrated article about free-divers.
"For the first time, talent has direct access to stories and material from the company that has produced proportionately the finest journalism for years," Ray said. "Before, you had to chase the rights, but now, a filmmaker can sit across the table, describe their plans, and we can be in business the following week. We’re cutting right through studio and other barriers."
Speaker said the editors of the magazines signed off on the venture, all the way up to Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore.
"This was organized at the highest level, to be sure we do this wisely and correctly," Speaker said. "We will have full access and support of editors to identify the best properties to tap into the fund. The goal is to benefit both the writers and Time Inc. The archive was underexploited, and it is a vast resource."
http://www.variety.com:80/article/VR1117990056.html?categoryid=13&cs=1
A good example of the perils of being an early mover: NYT two years-ahead of the curve is selling options on articles; Time Inc sits back and watches and jumps an entire step, or several, ahead, and moves into co-production.
On the subject of early adopters, whatever happened to Alan Friedman, ex-IHT journalist and Italian media star walking off with the rights to use the IHT for IHTV? Must look that up.
I do remember going to a couple of meetings in Rome with Alan about this, and the then publisher getting me to get a mate of mine, an ex-BBC Newsnight producer, to do an evaluation of their programming (his conclusion: amateur hour crap, more or less - I'm sure it's much better now if it still exists).
I don't think the then publisher, Goldmark, shared my mate's report with the higher-ups in NY (and Washington at that time) as I have reason to believe Alan got a steal of a deal, so low was the interest or belief in the potential of IHTV from the IHT's then owners.
Alan will probably end up selling back the TV rights for a fortune, if he hasn't done so already! Not that he hasn't made another one off the IHT's back already.
Now there is a man who was ahead of his time. He saw the future of journalism and grasped it with both hands: ego+contacts+good journalism+need for talking heads and filler for cable channels+brand name of employer = start my own company = money making opportunity. Forget all this silly wages nonsense.
He also reminds me of a great bloke who was the IHT's technical guy once - sorry, I've forgotten his name - who proposed a whacky idea back in c1998/9 to create an IHT spin-off acting as a global ISP. What a fab idea I thought! A community of readers emailing around the world from X@iht.com.
However no one knew or could understand properly what he was on about, a great opportunity went by, and he promptly left the company. So much for foresight.
http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
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