Journalism of the future needs strong code of ethics: Sukumar Ranganathan, HT

Journalism needs a new ownership model as the current model is broken and is certainly not going to work, said Sukumar Ranganathan, Editor-In-Chief, Hindustan Times on Friday. Ranganathan delivered a keynote address on the topic ‘The Future of Journalism’ at the e4m-DNPA Future of Digital Media Conference at Hyatt Regency, Bhikaji Cama Place, New Delhi. “The ownership model we have now might have worked in the past and for many of us, it may still be working, but it's broken and it’s not going to work any further. I think it's largely momentum that is keeping us going. We really need a new model”, he said.

Ranganathan put forth nine perspectives of journalism based on his experience and shed insights on how the future of journalism would look like. The first one being ownership, Ranganathan stressed that there is a need for a new ownership model, new management and leadership in journalism today, especially on the business side. "You have to manage a newsroom like a newsroom because that's how you build brands and the future of journalism is linked to that”, he added.

Speaking about the code of ethics in journalism, Ranganathan said the newsroom and journalism of the future need a strong code of ethics and the willingness to learn new technologies to adapt to the evolving digital landscape.

“You cannot function without a code of ethics, and this has to cover every aspect of journalism. Any newsroom of the future has to have its priorities right, which means it needs to decide what it needs to do. Journalism or the future will require journalists to learn new skills, they will require specialisation, they need to focus on data and how to deal with data, some will have to understand visualisation and coding among other things”, he added.

Talking about the importance of technology in journalism, Ranganathan said that journalism of the future has to be technology agnostic and it will have to adapt to whatever platforms come about. “The big mistake that we are making is that we believe the platform is journalism, but it's not journalism, because journalism remains at the core and the platform will keep changing”, he said.

The HT Editor-In-Chief further spoke about what kind of business model would work for new journalism. “Digital revenue isn't really as lucrative as existing streams of revenue for large newsrooms. I say this purely from the perspective of being able to sustain the newsroom costs that are required to produce high-quality journalism. You might be able to survive in a niche, and you might be able to produce very tabloid kind of stuff, but high-quality journalism costs, and will advertising alone work for it? Will subscription work for it? Perhaps it hasn't really worked in any significant way for anyone in India”. “Maybe we need a USO fund for journalism. Any tech company that wants to operate in this country should contribute to the US have fun, which can then be split among newsrooms on the basis of their circulation” he added.

Concluding his address, Ranganathan said that journalism of the future will have to be done out of newsrooms, that believe in fairness with all creators, internal creators as well as external creators, journalists, coders, visualizers, data providers, and external ones which are the freelancers.