2017 is not a good year for those working in media. Many houses are planning huge retrenchments, salary cuts and recruitment freeze. Hindustan Times has already declared closure of four editions and three bureaus, leaving more than a 1000 employees in the lurch. As per the circular issued by the company, Kolkata, Indore, Bhopal and Ranchi editions will be closed down from January 9. Shobhana Bharatiya headed Birla Group’s Hindustan Times has also decided to shut down its bureaus in Allahabad, Varanasi and Kanpur. All these bureaus belong to Uttar Pradesh and the shocking decision came when the state goes to Assembly polls.
The reason cited in the Hindustan Times (HT) circular is very curious.
The media owners are floating a theory that this decision was taken by them due to the demonetization affects. The question that begs to be asked is if media world was running on cash and carry system till date? Some media owners excuse is that advertising revenue has decreased due to demonetization. But those should have been offset by several banking and digital payments advertisements that have steeply increased during this period.
The reason cited in the Hindustan Times (HT) circular is very curious. It says the decision of closure of four editions and three bureaus in UP were taken due to the massive investments in Delhi Head Office’s digitization programme.
“Post our major investments into a Digital Future and creation of an ultra modern & Hi-tech newsroom in Delhi, backed by an enormous effort to culturally transform our ways of meeting the changing consumption trends, we are now shifting gears to move towards an accelerated digital trajectory,” says the first paragraph of the circular on shutting down editions and bureaus leading to around 1000 employees retrenchment. The detailed letter with jugglery of words is published below.
Moreover HT’s Delhi office’s Business Bureau is almost closed as most of the staff has been terminated. Management says’ the Group’s Business paper Mint can manage reporting for Hindustan Times. This move came after the advice of Boston Consulting Group (BSG). In Delhi alone, as many as 40 journalists were in the target of the HR Department of Hindustan Times to implement the cost cutting advised by the BSG.
Insiders say, Times of India Group has already declared a recruitment freeze.
According to reliable sources Ananda Bazaar Patrika (ABP) Group mentored by Aveek Sarkar is also planning major layoffs at his TV and newspapers including the Telegraph. It is believed that the HR department of ABP Group has targeted around 500 posts to be shelved off.
Insiders say, Times of India Group has already declared a recruitment freeze. According to this decision, there will be no recruitments to replace retirements or resignations. Last heard the management is also envisaging salary cuts, which was once implemented in 2009, citing Global Meltdown as an excuse.
It is interesting to note that no dissent has been heard from Editors’ Guild or Journalist Unions, which normally create a lot of noise on many subjects, usually on politically motivated issues. This time around, the reaction across the board is one of muted surprise.
Here is a copy of the email sent by HT to its employees…
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This will be a permanent shift from print to digital due to many reasons
1) People are not interested in being stuffed with opinion of the journalists which most of the time is biased. We would rather prefer an interactive media where we can express our views, so make way for social and digital media. I myself find current print media way of reporting especially in India very biased and something I need not necessarily have to put up with.
2) Way to go green. When we are moving towatds more ecofriendly methods it is natural that dissemination of information should also make a progression towards that.
3) In the age of technology next generation has a distinct preference towards social and digital media to keep up with the latest happenings
With the sky rocketing increase in digital media of all kinds, the conventional media outfits- paper driven are going out of business.
Ads, not paid subscriptions wee their sources of revenue.
Newspaper, Magazine revenue is crashing.
Sensationalism also can only get you so far.
All media outfits have to go digital, images ,photos, sensationalism.
Note soft porm in on the rise in all media, to generate eyeballs.
Competition is there from Facebook, and the millions of sites that compete for eyeballs, and Advertising revenue.
Brick and mortar buildings, staff with salaries is not today’s business model.
People looking for serious views turn to sites like this one.
Team PGurus- Keep up the good work
Time to revisit good old door-darshan for news in spite of weighed unfairly for Govt news.
Change the layouts of newspapers and strengthening classifieds.
Think of strong classifieds of need based categories once again with moderate values
Classifieds were the strength of Ht which they started to lose in the mid nineties.the focus was made on business ads instead of readership value ads I.e. matrimonial recruitment and other need based categories.no category of modest personal youth oriented programme was introduced during last twenty years resulting the spillover.the time is to relook your strength and make neat and clean main newspaper to run tenders and business ads in a separate section.more to continue
Most news paper/TV news channels have gone for sensation overkill and lost relevance, reliability for the news seeking public, the readers/viewers having gone cynical to take news casts with a bushel of salt,to disbelieve it first hand ;like the proverbial weatherman.
Reduced newspaper circulation/reading is a worldwide phenomenon. Newsprint consumption in US and Canad is reducing about 8% per years for last 5-6 years. Many newspaper has closed down.