What are The Hindu’s new-media efforts? Do you see a future in that direction?

Good question, this is what we have also been trying to find out (laughs). We have a website and we are redesigning it with multimedia and so on. But there is no revenue here, there is no business model I can see anywhere.

We are in a good position because our old media is still growing. And growing quite healthily, until this (economic slowdown) happened.
I think we have probably 3-5 years—may be less, but that is my perspective—to get it right on the new media front, to find the balance between print and new media.

Whether mobile telephony, which has taken off hugely in India, will provide a credible platform for news? I don’t know. I definitely use it. Can it scale up? I don’t know. Whether journalism can do well on that platform? I don’t know.

Internet penetration in India is not even close to a stage when you feel cannibalization (of print) will occur. That gives you some comfort.

I’m very pleased with the present situation, when print is still growing, and you can do as much or as little as you want on the Internet. When Internet penetration reaches, say, 200 million users, then the game might change. But even then, where’s the revenue model?

Sometime back, the Hind Group launched Ergo, a first of its sort experiment with the free tabloid model. How’s that project doing?

It’s an independent operation and I haven’t checked the latest numbers or anything but it’s doing well. We are continuing with it. Early days, but it’s completely experimental.

What has changed for The Hindu with the launch of The Times of India in Chennai?

It’s good, we welcome competition. The Times of India is a major newspaper. For us, circulation has actually grown. As a result of TOI coming in, we lowered our cover price from Rs3.20 to Rs2.50. We would have liked it higher, but Rs2.50 is pretty good. They sell at Rs2 and they have lots of promotions going on.

But your circulation has actually gone up?

Substantially. I don’t know the latest figures, but by more than 35,000 in the Chennai market alone.

I never put down The Times of India. I learn a lot from them. There are other papers that are non-serious, but not TOI. I not only respect it, I read it with a great deal of interest. There is a lot of criticism out there (against TOI) but it’s a serious newspaper. You may not agree with some of the views, some of the things, and they may not like what we do also. But it’s a major newspaper.

You have opposed the liberalization of the media sector for long. The recent change in foreign direct investment (FDI) policy may mean greater FDI in media. What are your thoughts on this?

We have to study this. Yes, we have been opposed to this, we didn’t want the character of the Indian media to change or it to be subject to all kinds of external pressures. Hyper-commercialization, dumbing down, tabloidization, etc. Now that it (the new policy) has come, it is fait accompli and we have got to respond to that.

So far as magazines are concerned, raising the FDI cap is a positive development. There has been stagnation. There are many excellent titles abroad which could contribute a great deal to the Indian publishing scene.

But if it affects daily newspapers, then it’s different. Because daily newspapers are the core of our media development, and they have done extremely well. Even despite the slowdown, the growth trends are quite good. We don’t want dailies to be destabilized by greater foreign direct investment.

Recently, there have been many attempts to regulate news media, especially television news. Does this trend disturb you?

They don’t disturb me (laughs) because no government can get away with imposing a restrictive regime in the name of regulation. This has come about after the Mumbai attacks. Many channels and journalists went overboard, whipping up hysteria and indulging in war mongering. Also some telecasts seem to have adversely affected the operation. But it has to be seen in a balanced manner. A lot of the coverage I saw was good, it took the event powerfully to the people here and abroad, and a lot of journalists displayed tremendous courage in being there.

The best is self regulation. Codes of conduct—we all need them. In a way the print media is much better protected constitutionally and legally because of article 19 1A that guarantees freedom of speech and expression subject to reasonable restrictions. This law has been strengthened by judicial interpretation, mainly by the Supreme Court, so any law that goes against the spirit of this will likely be struck down. Or there will be a huge movement against it.

But there is the danger of losing public support. Legislation may be enacted and even the courts may think that way and then you lose out. But it hasn’t gone to that stage yet in India and it won’t. 

You recently went to court against the ban against exit polls during elections. What was your rationale?

I think the election commission, from time to time, overreacts. So it banned exit polls and issued a notice. We said, who the hell are you? You have no jurisdiction over the press. You can talk to us and if it’s a reasonable thing we’ll do it. But there is no evidence to suggest that polls influence actual voting.

In the United States presidential elections, there is no law banning exit polls but all the TV networks decide together that they won’t broadcast the findings of the exit poll before voting is over. We also need intelligent agreements like that, rather than banning something.

But this argument that exit poll results influence actual voting, has found support among political parties as well.

Yes, especially among those who think they will lose. It’s simply not true. I can give you many examples. In 1998, all the exit polls found that Jayalalithaa would lose. She won big. It makes absolutely no difference.

So we went to court and the election commission had to withdraw its petition. But the media also has to be sensible. If you do polls by the minute, then there is a problem.

Can you pick two things about today’s newspapers that you would have differently?

There is definitely dumbing down of news, no doubt about that. There is this continuous attempt to pander to the lowest common denominator. A lot of people are put off by this. The second is editorialising in the guise of news. We crack down on it big time. Thirdly, the lack of verification. Journalism is supposed to be a discipline of verification. But there is none today. Those who are supposed to check also don’t care. And when mistakes occur, own up and correct it. 

We have a news ombudsman and he keeps everybody on their toes. We learned it from The Guardian. We are very close to them in terms of exchanging ideas.

There is a buzz that this closeness might translate into a business relationship as well?

We hope so. There have been some ideas, but these are early days. I look forward to the Guardian Weekly. It remains to be tested. It is putting together material that is in a sense already online, so it should offer more than that. We want to work with them.

There were reports that The Hindu is in talks with Australia’s Fairfax media for a possible strategic relationship?

That was true earlier, but then Fairfax went into a tailspin. The CEO resigned due to differences with the board etc. So I guess that is that. Nothing is on currently.

What is the status of Metronation Chennai? (The Hindu and NDTV have joined hands to launch a city-specific news channel in Chennai.)

We are going ahead with it and it will be launched soon. We have a lot of confidence in our partner, NDTV.

Disclosure: ContentSutra’s parent ContentNext Inc. is owned by the Guardian Media Group, which publishes The Guardian