Tuesday I will be attending an open debate organized by N Ram, Editor of The Hindu, widely read news daily in India, and one my favourites when I was in college. The debate is also attended by two eminent personalities from The Guardian including Ian Meyes. The debate will be on ‘The future of the newspaper vis-a-vis the new-age information tools’ - i.e. online news reportage and blogs.



Collecting a few thoughts.



In India senior journalists and editors are quite confident that blogging won’t be posing any threat to newspapers just as the satellite TV wasn’t able to do it. The newspapers didn’t face real threat when the satellite television invaded our bedrooms with news coverage from all over the world some two decades back. Why?



1. Though news changed as the news broke, yet, it couldn’t give a summary of the background leading to the news every time. You couldn’t go back as you wished to get a deeper analysis of any event.



2. The news was not customizable. E.g. if you wanted to hear news about say weather or sports, and there is a big political story going on, you had to wait till the story is covered and only then the weather or sports news is broadcasted. With newspapers, you can choose what you want to read first. Newspapers gave you the option that news channels didn’t.



3. If you missed a news item, you had to wait till the news bulletin is broadcasted.



4. TVs are not really portable. You can’t carry them on your laps or under your armpits to places.



5.When satellite channels started broadcasting news 24 X 7, we had to depend on cables to get the feeds.



Now, will it be the same for the newspapers in the face of adversaries like online news content and blogs?



Yes, in my opinion, the impact will be nothing short of significant for the newspapers. Why?



a.) Social networking. It was the same thing that put fear in the hearts of Encarta and Britannica from Wikipedia. With newspapers, no doubt you can put news in front of masses but blogging brought the masses to work on news and distribute among ourselves which actually paved the way for unbiased two way information exchange among the people and put the power back into the hands of masses. Now you don’t need to wait for your letter to be published in the newspaper, neither you have to search for a source to raise your opinion. Blogging gave you the power to express yourself, and not be censored or edited by the editors and corporates. Not only you can blog your opinion on your own, you can go and agree or disagree with others on their blogs via comments and trackbacks.



b) Every man is an expert in his own field. Could the senior journalist and editors who have working for years and years in news business be beaten by young and novice bloggers? At first impression it seems highly unlikely. But let’s scrap the surface a little. N Ram whom I greatly admire for his columns in The Hindu. The quality of his writing, narration is second to none. Similar are the other senior journalists. But these newspaper were left as only spectators during Iraq War, when the layman didn`t know whom to believe with Al-Jazeera on one hand spewing venom against the west, and FOX News that was dishing ridiculously opinionated news against Iraqi Government, it was Salam Pax whom the world read with some trust, because he was the one who was witnessing fireworks and facing the sufferings.



c) Choice: The internet provides us with choice of information that is beyond any measure. Like, we can keep hopping endlessly from one site to another reading, viewing or hearing different opinions from different quarters about a single thing. With newspapers it is possible only to a very small extent, but then too it is not viable for the general public. You just can’t buy a newspaper and throw it away after having a glance like you can close a window if you didn’t like a certain thing.



d) Two way Interaction. You can post your comments/opinions and hear on what people have to say on your views.



e) Winner of the moment. Future trend will be that whoever has the best story will be the king for the day, be it an individual blogger reporting from a war zone or someone who just witnessed a bomb blast in front of his eyes. The days when a certain media publishing house was considered to be the best amongst equals are over. Today everything depends on the content - its quality, its relevance, its speed and accessibility.



f) Costs: The cost of running a newspaper is, well, beyond the reach of a common man. But it hardly costs a dime to have your own blog and run it. The best thing about it is that you don’t need to be an Einstein to maintain a blog, anybody who can work on a computer can do it, be it a computer whiz or a kid who loves games or a homemaker who wants to share her recipe.



g) Voice: Though the language in blogs may be a bit stronger than what you read in newspapers, the best things about blogs are that they are individual (and sometimes collective) opinions and not the opinion of a certain editor with long scissors. This way you get a more or less unbiased opinion on a certain issue reading blogs of various bloggers that newspapers seldom can.