"Today everybody has become a media house"

The global world plays a larger role in today’s time; it influences change and growth in every sphere. There is technology, social media and the diverse universe of happenings all around us, with globally awakened viewers. In this changing scenario, are the old techniques enough? Have we trained our young minds to fully equip them to battle and deliver the best? How are we preparing the next generation of journalists?

BV Rao, Editor, Governance Now feels that in this age of mobile and internet, everybody has become a media house. The digital medium allows everyone to become a journalist. However, the intriguing question, according to him, is that are we ready for the digital explosion?

According to Anant Goenka, Head of Digital, Indian Express, media must learn to adapt. The platform that digital medium offers as tools to tell stories present a great opportunity. He believes that people are trying to adopt the new medium but it is also essential to provide an environment for the medium to thrive. Goenka added that there is too much of an appetite for beyond the hard core news. “Ad spends on digital is growing to various genres and media companies have to capture those genres to stay ahead.”

All the media companies are investing huge amount of time and money on digital and they are adopting various practices to train the journalists.

Rahul Kansal, Executive President, Bennett, Coleman & Co believes that the problem is not that news is not consumed online. There is a lot of news commented and shared like never before.  According to him, the problem is that news is consumed in a fragmented way and it is not receiving the ad support on the internet. There are a lot of options on the online space to invest money.

Kansal added, “We would like to have a strong presence online and stay ahead of the others. We would also like to make print more and more relevant to the young audiences. Online is the future but can we make print really close to online by creating richer experiences?”

The digital medium also requires adequate training at the media schools so that the new generation of journalists is fully equipped to deliver best through the medium.

Sunit Tandon, Director General, IIMC said, “We are in a transition phase. Most of the media schools are preparing the students for the traditional space and not to become entrepreneurs, but the content is being evolved rapidly. Review of the courses is happening and adaptation is taking place with the changing times. Teachers are also adapting quickly.”

However, he believes that the traditional medium will not die because of the low internet penetration and a small size of population being impacted by it. Journalists don’t have to bombard people with information, but their job is to put a perspective to the information and all this will continue the more we have multi-faceted sources. Tandon stated, “Specialised content will be monetised.”

Nitin Mantri, CEO, Avian Media feels that the news sold online globally is very different and India is far behind the global standards. However, times are changing as the generation is evolving. According to him, the journalists are far more responsible. They can’t just write anything because of the nature of news being viral. He thinks that the industry as a whole should do something for the regional medium because it is the largest growing space.

Experts widely believe that future journalist must be responsible, intelligent, passionate, digitise and specialise and have a strong opinion and perspective about things.

The panelists were speaking at the inaugural of ‘IMPACT Careers 360 M-School Rankings’ & ‘IMPACT Careers 360 Conference on Future of Talent in Media & Communication Industry’.