exchange4media

How has journalism changed over the years since the time you began your career? Has it changed for the good or for the worse?

Well, I can speak for journalism in general, but not for journalism in India because I have been in the Indian media industry only about a year and a half. I think the first big crisis for journalism came after 9/11 and the media industry failed that test, but I think it has now recovered from that. The essential crisis was – ‘what is the role of journalism in the face of a national crisis?’ I think the western media industry failed. In fact, the media industry globally failed that test. They became polarised very quickly and began to reflect largely their government’s view, particularly the British and the American media. Though it has recovered, I am not sure if tomorrow there is another national or international crisis, whether the media industry will be able to act substantially differently from what happened last time, which is very sad. In India, as I had said, my reference personally is only one and a half years, but what I understand is there that is a lack or rigour in the work that people do and there is a larger editorial directive to dumb down the news. The challenge for a good journalist is to be able to take a complex situation, cull the essence of it and explain it in a very acceptable manner. It sounds easy, but is a very difficult thing, but that is what all good journalists should aspire to do.

How has Businessworld grown over the years?

Businessworld has grown substantially over the years. About 10 years ago, it was the third largest business magazine, and now it is the most read business magazine. This is not what I have accomplished, but by some very illustrious predecessors of mine, particularly Tony Joseph, who turned it into the largest selling business magazine. Apart from the numbers, qualitatively Businessworld is a case where you get good journalism, where we take complex issues and try to cull it in a more readable way and present it to the readers in a manner that we are not aligning to any ideology or any business house. We do tend to practice journalism with in-built depth. It’s a working process.

What are the advantages of being part of the ABP Group?

There are tremendous advantages. Firstly, the reputation, because the ABP Group is recognised as being an editorially-led group and is very professional in the way they approach their content and stories, in fact, in almost everything it does. I can’t speak for the business side, of course, because in ABP there is a very clear distinction between the business side and the editorial side. This is a culture that has permeated down the value chain, hence this is a fundamental value that I believe keeps us editorially fair, stable and strong. The other advantage is of course access to the other resources in the Group, whether it is the editorial resources like The Telegraph or business resources, in terms of managing and creating great events, which definitely is a plus.

How are the other publications of Businessworld – such as, Doing Business in Asia, The Marketing White Book, Understanding Behaviour, and Businessworld Mega B-School Guide – doing?

They are doing extremely well, in fact, The Marketing White Book is one of the highest selling books in Asia and is extremely valued by the marketing community. The Mega B-School Guide is also extremely valued and sales of those kinds of products have been increasing quite exponentially.

What differentiates Businessworld from other business magazines in the same genre?

First and foremost, I respect all our competitors and they all are doing a very good job. I think what differentiates us is that we are weekly and hence, are able react much more timely. For example, when the Ranbaxy deal with IG was consummated, we could do a cover story the next day. Of course, we have a great pharma correspondent, Gauri Kamath, who could do that. Had Gauri been working for one of our competitors, she would have to wait for a week for the story to come out. So, timeliness is the key. Also, in Businessworld, our approach is to be fresh – to be intellectually fresh and to present our news and material in a visually fresh manner. We make sure that the language is fresh and engaging. The last one is actually something that is quite curious, some of our competitors create very thick products of 150 pages or more. We consciously keep Businessworld a very lean and mean product that someone can pick up and digest very efficiently, because that is the nature of our readership. Business people are very short on time, so our goal is to give something to our readers that they can take and process and value – all in 20 minutes to half an hour. As I had said, it is often more difficult to craft the essence of something down to 300-400 words than writing 3,000 words. We have got feedback from our readers who really appreciate our tight and efficient journalism.

How do you manage the entire news process – right from the story idea to news gathering to presentation?

Businessworld is a place where we work in a very democratic fashion, it is intellectually a very open house so to speak, all ideas are discussed. We also have a remarkably ‘uncompetitive’ work culture, whereas in many publications journalists within the organisation are very competitive with each other. We do have competition to a healthy degree, but it is always superseded by a spirit of working together. So, when an idea is presented, it is discussed with different people and we have a culture where everyone’s input matters, regardless of his/her designation. The input is valued more for what it is rather that who says it, so whether you are a trainee or the editor, the story and ideas are put on the table and discussed threadbare. The democracy of that process allows us to remain intellectually fresh because there is no fixed format for approaching what we see around us. It is a brain storming effort and once it is settled, the person goes to work on it. We are one of the few Indian publications to have correspondents in Silicon Valley, New York. Again, this is where being part of the ABP Group helps. We have ABP correspondents in London, Bejing, Singapore, and Hong Kong, so if a story needs global inputs – which so many stories do – we get that. If a story requires cross-disciplinary input, that is also taken care of. So, if someone is doing a corporate story on a pharmaceutical company, then our pharma correspondent and corporate correspondent work together on it. The story is built that way and submitted to one of our deputy editors, who will the assess the story to make sure it has a 360-degree reporting and that it adheres to the original hypothesis or challenges the original hypothesis, but has the background to make the challenge valid. Then the story may be rewritten or massaged by a rewriting team that works on making the writing flow easy to read. While all that is happening, there is also a production brief that is given to our design department that explains what the story is about so that the design of the pages of the story reflects the mood and direction of the piece. That is one of the reasons that Businessworld is visually also very interesting. Every issue of Businessworld is designed for two kinds of readers – one is the reader-reader, who will actually sit and read the magazine, and the other for the reader who flips through the pages. The pages are designed in a way that someone who is flipping through can have a quick sharp take away in the form of visuals, graphics, tables, charts, photographs. Thus, even if you flip through the 4-5 pages of the cover story and you saw only the visuals cues on that page, you still get the essence of the story.

What are your future plans for Businessworld? Are you looking to launch more titles?

Growth is a big part of our agenda. I won’t talk about exactly what we are going to do, but there are some obvious things like the Internet, and then there are a couple of not so obvious things that we are working on, which I think will be quite interesting. We are not in a hurry like most of the media houses are to get things out. The one thing that is well known is that we are partnering with Fortune to bring out an Indian edition of Fortune magazine. That requires certain regularity processes that it has to go through. Fortune will compete with Businessworld in a sense, and so for the ethical processes I keep myself detached from what Fortune is doing as it is also headed by a very competent team on the editorial side by Bonny Mukherjee. So, it does not need any inputs from our side. But I think ultimately it is dependent on the Government giving its clearance.

How important is the content-advertisement mix for a magazine like Businessworld?

I don’t think it is any more or any less important for Businessworld than it is for any other magazine. When a reader buys a publication, the implicit expectation is that at least half of it should be editorial and we adhere to that pretty much. Some other publications don’t do that, but we do and we have a lot of loyalty among our readers. One the reason is the heritage of the magazine as we’ve had so many eminent editors that have helped win the goodwill for the brand – Jaggi, Vijay Thapar, Tony Joseph, over the years have helped build goodwill for the brand.

Given the growing popularity and usage of the Internet and the television media, will your target audience devote the time to read the magazine?

We are as much on the web as we are on print. We get huge numbers of clicks on our website, which is a tremendous advantage for us. It is a tremendous resource for people wanting to get information on India Inc, Indian business and economy. TV does walk away with breaking news cycle of news, but that’s not where we are playing anyways. People read Businessworld for getting clarity, depth and understanding on various complicated issues.

What are the various ways of revenue generation?

It is whether we do private treaties, otherwise, there are only two significant revenue streams of ad sales and advertising. ABP has problems with private treaties. We don’t have any innovation on private treaties. We only do sales and advertising in the magazine.