My New Coordinates – Moving to Mumbai, India

After about 11 great years in the US, I’m moving back to Mumbai, India for a couple years. I’m taking on yet another exciting gig with WSJ. I’ll be joining the Dow Jones team in India, and I’ll be responsible for developing and managing The Wall Street Journal Digital consumer business in India. Check out http://india.wsj.com when you get a chance, and keep an eye out for new products in the coming months.

To all my friends in the US – it’s been a real pleasure getting to know you and to work with you over the years. Let’s definitely keep in touch, and I hope your work/vacation plans bring you to India at some point within the next couple years. Definitely look me up if you’re in India, it’d be great to meet up. My last day in the US is Aug 6th 2009.

I’m really excited about my move, and look forward to new beginnings and making some new friends in India. I’m sure I’ll get to apply some of my learnings from the US, and most probably unlearn a few things I’ve learnt here and do things a bit differently in India. Drop me a note if you have suggestions, have any advice to offer, or just want to get together for a drink.

The Changing News Business Model

Interesting move by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in abandoning the print edition and switching to an online-only publication. The news business has a fixed overhead, there are a number of full-time reporters. So even though the marginal cost in online distribution is zero to extremely low, there’s a very high fixed cost in creating new content. Therefore, what’s interesting in P-I’s announcement is not just the change in the medium of publishing and distribution, but also the structural changes to the news desk and strategic changes in news coverage.

The P-I’s new model hinges on slashing its work force, scaling back its news coverage. The P-I will revamp the familiar model of a big-city daily as a catch-all of local and national news and features. Instead, it will cover local events and publish blogs and columns from staff, readers and prominent local citizens.

Since the online news business model is predominantly ad supported, driving traffic to the site is primary. Broadly speaking, there is 2 kinds of traffic to a news site online.

1. Front-door traffic – readers coming directly to your site. The front-door traffic is typically high for a site with loyal readers that value the content and the brand.
2. Side-door traffic – readers being referred to your site. They could be referred by friends (email, IM), your network (Facebook, Twitter), news portals and aggregators, blogs linking to your story, RSS readers and web search. Depending on the news site, the sidedoor traffic could be anywhere from 30% to 70%.

There is so much content available on the web, it’s impossible for one news source to be the catch-all for every news topic. The P-I is not a national publication, so it is hard for it to be the authority on national news.

Thanks to portals, aggregators and social networks, every story on the web is then just a click away. So if a majority of your readers come through the sidedoor, then it is critical that your stories be “link-worthy”. If it doesn’t get much link-love, readers won’t be able to easily find the story. But even if you’re the news site of authority on a certain topic, its hard to have every story be the ‘best of ‘ and get others to link to it.

The P-I will resemble a local Huffington Post more than a traditional newspaper, with a news staff of about 20 people rather than the 165 it had, and a site with mostly commentary, advice and links to other news sites, along with some original reporting.

This is the new catch-all model. Identifying a niche and focusing resources on it, and rather than create every bit of content from scratch link to other good stories out there. Become the aggregator and curator of good content in addition to producing original content, and increase your organic readership and front-door traffic.

The Techmeme leader board is a snapshot of various tech news sources competing for link backs on the Techmeme front page. The leader board is a mix of big publications with hundreds of reporters, and some popular tech blogs with only a handful of writers. When it comes to competing for side-door traffic, it’s a level playing field.The most interesting and link-worthy stories make it to the top.

References: WSJ.com and NYTimes.com

WSJ PhotoWall – Year 2008 In Pictures Powered By CoolIris

WSJ.com published its 2008 year-end photos, and in addition to the regular slideshows, there’s a cool implementation using the CoolIris embed wall – the WSJ PhotoWall.

CoolIris brings clickless browsing or pageless navigation to photos and videos, and that’s what makes the PhotoWall fun to play with. Anytime a user is required to click to navigate, there’s a drop off after the first couple clicks. CoolIris eliminates the click and helps surface the long tail. Now only if Apple could take the CoolIris iPhone app and use it to power the app store, they wouldn’t have to worry about the sales performances of apps in the long tail.

Check out the WSJ PhotoWall and let me know what you think?

Following The Mumbai Mayhem On Twitter, And The Role of Twitter In Breaking News

Since the news of the Mumbai attacks first broke yesterday afternoon, I have been switching between live video streams on Indian news channels CNN-IBN and NDTV. I have also been closely following the #mumbai room on Twitter, new tweets are coming in at a furious pace. There’s an ongoing idealogical debate on whether Twitter is a real source of news, especially with the backdrop of the unfortunate terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The tweets are a mix of people expressing their opinion, relaying conversations with friends and family in Mumbai, repeating what they’re seeing on TV, and lot of retweeting. So even though the signal-to-noise ratio on Twitter is pretty low, and hard to tell facts from rumors and speculation, Twitter is still a key source of real-time update aggregation to stay on top of all the news.

While a majority of big media organizations have already developed or acquired a citizen journalism platform, #mumbai room on Twitter was where all the action was yesterday and given Twitter’s adoption that’s not going to change anytime soon. So to all big media companies betting big on Citizen Journalism – it’s hard to change consumer behavior, so hoping users will come directly to you and provide news and assets is hoping for a bit much. Full credit to CNN TV in covering the Mumbai terror events -  without waiting for assets to flow into iReport.com, it was apparent that CNN staffers were actively monitoring the twitter streams yesterday and in fact invited some active twitter users to speak on TV from Mumbai.

I was speaking with a WSJ blogger last week, right after the Motrin incident on Twitter, about the relevance and significance of Twitter. In his daily quest for breaking news, he said he’s now closely monitoring Twitter – following several people on Twitter and keeping a close eye on trending topics. The stream of data on Twitter is just that (raw data), and it’s upto the mainstream media given their resources and creditworthiness to mine this data and filter the signal from noise.

Remembering R.D.Burman…

I had a bunch of R.D.Burman tracks, and I found a couple videos on YouTube – so wanted to package it all together into a post. June 27th was R.D.Burman’s 69th birth anniversary. Popularly known as Pancham (fifth note in Hindustani music) to his family, friends and fans, his music has been enjoyed by more than 2 generations of music lovers since first his independent composition for Chotte Nawab in 1961. .

After his best years in the 70s, Pancham was overlooked by the Indian film industry in the late 80s and early 90s. Arguably, he was ahead of his time. I remember talking to Manohari Singh, his music assistant and saxophone player, in 2003 long after Pancham’s death. Manohari Singh said, “Pancham knew we were back in the game when he had finished composing the music for Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 1942: A Love Story. Pancham told us be ready for good times again.” Unfortunately, Pancham passed away on 4th Jan 1994, just weeks before the release of the film.

Vishwas Nerurkar writes in his book on Pancham, “My assessment of a great composer is that he should fulfill three criteria: 1) timeless compositions, offering the same freshness of melody years after their period or lifetime; 2) originality; and 3) trend-setter in the industry. On each of these three vital conditions, Pancham emerges in bright colors and honours.”

During his peak in the 70s, Pancham claimed he was composing 4-5 songs/day. A couple songs from lyricist Gulshan Bawra’s tribute to Pancham. In a heavy Punjabi accent, Bawra introduces these songs with anecdotes on how they were composed.

Kasme Vaade Nibhayenge Hum (the sarson saga)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Jane Jaan O Meri Jane Jaan (the newspaper influence)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Samandar Mein Nahake (the monsoon magic)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Pancham has collaborated with many western musicians, but his work with Jose Flores to produce ‘Pantera’ is commonly known. Though the Pantera songs are not among Pancham’s best compositions, they’re very rare. So I’ve uploaded the Pantera title here, and the hindi version he used for Priyadarshan’s Gardish.

Pantera (with Jose Flores)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Rang Rangeeli Raat (Gardish)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Pancham was a genius in inventing new sounds – rubbing a comb against plastic tube for Mere Samnewali Khidki (Padosan), blowing into an empty ‘Thumbs Up’ bottle for Mehbooba Mehbooba (Sholay), tapping glass with a spoon for Chura Liya Hai (Yaadon Ki Baarat). These are Pancham’s original musicians demonstrating his talent for composing and inventing new sounds.

And in this one, his musicians are jamming away to some of the old classics.

Indian Mythology Industry – Third Incarnation

Last week, ACK media announced the acquisition of a popular Indian comic book brand Amar Chitra Katha and Tinkle for $2.5 millon and is reportedly planning to invest $15-20 million in the next 3 years.

Samir Patil, founder investor and CEO of ACK Media told Hindustan Times: “It is a 100 per cent cash deal. We are looking to invest $15-20 million over the next two to three years to make use of opportunities in licensing content and characters, intensifying retail penetration and introduce more offerings in the digital medium.”Â

Smart move by ACK media, in acquiring the IP rights to popular Tinkle comic characters Suppandi, Shikari Shambu, Nasruddin Hodja, Kaalia the crow, Tantri the Matri, and the crew. I’m pretty sure the $20 million investment is largely towards digitizing these comic book characters into feature film releases.

The animation industry in India is heating up – Â opened up by the successful release of India’s first animation film Hanuman in 2005, and now followed by a sequel Hanuman returns, and a bunch of other big-budget and big-banner animation movies in the pipeline. With India being the most religious country in the world, most of the animation movies are based on Indian mythology characters India.Â

For the publishing and media companies, this is the third incarnation of the Indian mythology characters over the last 40 years – same stories, but packaged in a different format…

 1967: Anant Pai, the father of Indian comics, partners with India Book House to launch Amar Chitra Katha after contestants fail to answer questions on Indian mythology. If you, like me, grew up in early the 80′s, Amar Chitra Katha was the only source for Indian mythology characters besides, of course, your parents and grandparents.

1987: Then in the late 80s, Ramanand Sagar produced Ramayan, the first epic TV serial that ran for years. It was immensely successful and spawned a new industry of Indian epics made for TV – followed by Maharabhata, Krishna, and a few others.

2007: India’s first animation movie, Hanuman, is released in 2005 opening up the animation industry in India. And according to this IndiaFM article, bg names in Bollywood are falling over each other to hit the market with new animation movies based on mythology characters from popular characters like Hanuman and Krishna to little-known characters like Ghatothkach.

Idol Worshipping And Superstar Economics

Quentin Tarantino once said in an interview that the primary driver of the the film industry in the US and India was the superstar system. While Superstar Economics has been debated in the US, there’s no room for debate in the Indian film industry. The superstar renumeration is usually the biggest expense in a big budget Indian movie.

India’s costliest film, Sivaji, produced at an estimated $23 million was released 2 weeks ago. The hero of the film, Rajinikanth, is worshipped by his fans all over the world and it is a norm for die-hard Rajinikanth fans to buy tickets at multiple times face value to watch the first show of his newly released film. As successful as Steve Jobs was in generating media hype and long lines at Apple stores for the iphone, Rajinikanth wins hands down.

His movies are in a genre of it’s own, as his fans fondly call it the “wholesome entertainer”. It is a combination of John Wooish style, Tarantinoesque punch line dialogues, grandeur of a Met Opera, Stephen Kingish surprise endings, mixed with a few songs and a social message. My friend Ramprasad Sandilya and I decided to experience our first Rajinikanth movie ever, and it was certainly an experience worth writing about.

We were greeted with die-hard fans dressed like the superstar, some wearing his t-shirts. It was like a tailgating party without the alcohol. I noticed someone buying packets of popcorn and I bet he wasn’t going to eat it all. As soon as Ramprasad and I took our seats, I got a tap on my shoulder and handful of shredded newspaper pieces. The lights dimmed, titles rolled in, fans started screaming and whistling, pieces of paper and popcorn were floating up in the air. I heard a voice from behind me, “Rajini’s entry is in 5 minutes”. He had obviously seen the movie before.

At the end of it all, I asked a fan what the thought of the movie. He seemed a bit offended by my harmless question. Apparently Rajinikanth movies are not categorized as good or bad. He said, “What else can you expect from a Rajini movie? It is all about the experience”.

Tambola In The Newspaper… Brilliant!

The newspaper industry is booming in India as reported here, especially financial newspapers since the Indian economy is growing 8% and the average investor wants to stay informed. But that hasn’t stopped newspapers from getting creative.

This is obviously old news, but I recently found out about it since my parents moved to Bangalore. Move over Crosswords, Sudoku, Chess and Bridge problems. My father gets his daily copy of Times of India (TOI) delivered with a Tambola ticket. For this who don’t know what Tambola is, it is a game similar to Bingo.

Here’s how TOI describes the game – “A game with prizes and celebrities mixed together. Just grab today’s Times of India.” So every copy of TOI ships with a Tambola ticket. A series of numbers are released each day, and winners are selected within a week. These first round winners have to appear in person to play another round of Tambola at a gathering hosted by local celebrities. There are prizes for everyone and the whole event is sponsored by corporate firms.