Our edit meetings are led by data analysts: Rajiv Bansal, CDO & CEO, HT Digital Streams

It has been around two months since Rajiv Bansal took over the role of Chief Digital Officer and CEO, HT Digital Streams Ltd. In less than 60 days, he has managed to chalk out some innovative strategies to build new engagement and revenue models for HT digital.

 

For Bansal, Hindustan Times is no longer a print organization. Its fast-paced digital transformation is giving the brand a new identity. He says, “We don’t see ourselves as a print organisation but just a media organization. I believe our goal is to get information and content to consumers and that’s how we view ourselves. There is no doubt that print has been a very important part of our identity and continues to be our bread and butter even today.”

 

Evolving readers

 

As we witness the shift from print to digital consumption of news, traditional media brands are struggling to keep pace with the changing times. Bansal believes that despite this shift in platform preference, the appetite for news has not diminished. “These days, we are seeing that the readers want to engage on digital and in fact a lot of young people do not engage deeply with traditional newspapers anymore. The average time spent has drastically come down. It’s not that people are not consuming news; it’s just that they are consuming it on new channels of communication. Basically people, especially youngsters, are consuming the print news on other mediums like digital and social,” explains Bansal.

 

Cutting through the clutter

 

With millions of news content creators churning out news updates by the minute, is it challenging for big news brands to cut through the clutter? Speaking about the inherent advantage that a big brand enjoys in the cluttered news environment, Bansal says, “There is an undisputed weight to the brand name and people inherently trust big brands like HT, etc. So cutting through the clutter is not a big challenge for us. We are constantly leveraging on the big insights that we have gathered in our digital journey so far.”

 

There is no doubt that digital news publishers are beset with challenges despite the immense scope that they foresee. Undoubtedly, digital has also ensured democratization of distribution, unlike the captive audiences of print medium. Explaining the way ahead for news publishers in order to stay relevant in the digital game, Bansal adds, “The key to excel in the digital game is to have greater understanding of our core consumers. Moreover, the fact that we can easily see who is consuming our content and the nature of content getting consumed helps us to personalize content for our readers and target them effectively. Digital has taken us closer to the younger audience. I believe good content will be the most important factor for staying relevant in the news domain, irrespective of the news genre.”

 

Era of integrated newsrooms

 

Having served a stint in the Silicon Valley, Bansal is full of praise for HT’s adoption of technology, which according to him is nothing but world-class. “We are among the few media houses across the world that relies on integrated newsroom content. This helps us curate the right content for our digital readers and understand them better by using data analytics. Even our edit meetings are led by data analysts and that would have been unthinkable in traditional newsrooms few years back.”

 

Despite the big promise of digital, monetization of news content continues to be a challenge for media houses. Speaking about HT’s approach to monetizing digital content, Bansal states, “We have a rich understanding of our consumers today which was not possible with the pure print medium. The industry is experimenting with different ways of monetizing content across the world and this approach is ensuring that we innovate and evolve to stay relevant.”