DB Corp., publisher of Dainik Bhaskar and Divya Bhaskar, and joint venture partner in DNA, opened its initial public issue of shares and was subscribed 0.62 times on day one. The price band of the issue is Rs185-212. Competitor Jagran Prakashan is trading at Rs125.40. The company plans to raise…

The Mirror’s associate editor urged the news business to rely less on search engines and more on its journalism, in a World Newspaper Congress World Editors Forum keynote in Hyderabad, India. Matt Kelly, who first began his public crusade this summer on paidContent:UK, said: “In our great frantic headlong rush…

I arrived in a muggy but cool Hyderabad, India this evening, for the World Newspaper Congress, organized by the newly merged WAN & IFRA orgs, now grandly called World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. The venue and the conference seems to be chaotic this first night, not unlike the…

The results of the latest round of Indian Readership Survey is out and here’s a compilation of how some of the most popular English newspapers and magazines fared. All figures in this story are all-India average issue readership. Of the 25 English newspapers covered by this round, 12 registered an…

Essel Group chairman Subhash Chandra, part-owner of Mumbai-headquartered broadsheet Daily News and Analysis, or DNA, has assumed an “active role” in the day-to-day operations of the paper, a person close to the developments said. Chandra, through an investment arm, controls a 49% stake in DNA’s publisher Diligent Media Corp., with…

Newsprint prices, which had corrected majorly through 2009, has started inching up again after bottoming out at about $460 in August-September. The price for the ongoing October-December quarter is $550 and industry sources say it is expected to go up to $575-600 for the January-March quarter. Through 2008, price of…

In what will come as good news to Indian media professionals across companies who have suffered salary cuts, Mumbai-based daily Daily News and Analysis has announced a partial roll back of salary cuts it effected earlier this year during the heights of the economic slowdown. In April, the daily had…

Most English dailies in India registered a drop in circulation during January-June 2009, according to figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). Of the 52 editions of various dailies that were surveyed, only seven, including two editions of the same newspaper, registered a higher circulation compared with the previous…

For all of you who have asked over the years when the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle would be available outside the U.S., the answer is finally “now.” The Amazon World Kindle, aimed at English-language readers, is now being sold for $279 with international 3G wireless from AT&T (NYSE: T) covering…

For investors wondering if there are still any opportunities in media, former News Corp (NYSE: NWS). COO Peter Chernin has some advice: focus on digital and look to developing countries. In a panel discussion with Gordon Crawford, managing director of The Capital Group Companies, at the USC Annenberg School for…

So far, in our exclusive paidContent:UK/Harris Interactive poll, we’ve learned that only five percent of regular news site users would pay if their favorite haunt started charging, and that readers would prefer to subscribe annually (Thursday’s final installment: will bundling a newspaper subscription help?). But the all-important question is: how…

Day two in our exclusive paidContent:UK/Harris Interactive poll shows that more than half of those surveyed prefer a long-term subscription, not micropayments or day passes. Details here.

If Rupert Murdoch thinks readers will pay to read his websites, maybe he should think again. Exclusive research commissioned by paidContent:UK from Harris Interactive shows that most readers would run a mile. —If their favourite news site begins charging for access to content, three quarters of people would simply switch…

Use of ‘innovative’ ad layouts in print during the first half of 2009 was nearly five times higher than the usage same time last year, according to TAM Media Research’s ad monitoring service AdEx. ‘Innovative ads’ is a euphemism for ads that often intrude into editorial space, some examples of…

As more newspapers kick around the idea of charging for content, much of the attention has been focused on the pay models employed by the bigger players like the WSJ and the Financial Times. But quietly, some small- and medium-circulation papers are coming up with their own formulas to get…

Diligent Media Corp. Ltd (DMCL), the Mumbai-based publisher of Daily News and Analysis, or DNA, posted losses of Rs150 crore for the fiscal ended 31 March 2008. This information about the privately held firm is from a recent Sebi filing made by DB Corp. Ltd, whose promoters and promoter group…

DB Corp Ltd, publisher of Dainik Bhaskar, has filed a Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) for an initial public offering. The DRHP, filed on 14 August with market regulator the Securities and Exchange Board of India, proposes sale of up to 24,781,190 equity shares of face value of Rs10. The…

The youth wing of the ruling Indian National Congress party is launching a monthly magazine that is said to be the brainchild of party general secretary Rahul Gandhi, IANS reports. Young March will be the mouth piece of the Youth Congress the way Sandesh is to Congress. Youth Congress general…

Kasturi and Sons Ltd, the Chennai-based publisher of The Hindu, has decided to discontinue India’s first experiment in giving away a newspaper for free. The company said its tabloid, Ergo, will cease publication in print, but will continue to be available online. With this, we probably won’t soon see more…