Media In India/elsewhere

[Guest]

Selling editorial space: Changing times

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->For the owners, who once said selling newspapers is like selling pig iron, the way was simple: sell editorial space, considered to be sacred till now. So they set up Medianet. Launched by Bennett Coleman & Co, Medianet today sells editorial space in the editions of the Times group of newspapers. It didn’t concern them that selling editorial space crosses the divide between editorial and advertising, though it still appals many a media baron and journalist.

The Indian newspapers (other than the Times, of course) took sometime to react to this new phenomenon. And when it did (Business Standard first discussed this issue, and later The Hindustan Times carried op-ed pieces by top editors on the subject), it laced seriousness, and the issue fizzled out very fast. Again, the age-old practice happened: not to discuss the rot in your house to the public.
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Sevanti Ninan, well-known media critic, has a pertinent argument to make. She says: “The Times of India started the trend of bringing advertising upfront long ago, and having made its point, and its money, is moving on to push the boundary on frontiers that the others have not yet got to. It now has an online company called Medianet to negotiate rates for editorial space on different sections of the newspaper’s online edition. If the print supplements also pick up the same stories from the online edition, it is an extra bonus for the party that has placed the paid news. Look for a very tiny legend in the bottom right corner which says Medianet promo.”
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Nevertheless, editor-proprietor Aroon Purie was expressing disapproval in a [Business Standard] feature on the Bennett Coleman group’s decision to fix rates for news space on its news portal. But is sponsoring cover stories that far removed from selling news space? Will news that gets sponsors begin to find priority over news that does not? It’s getting competitive, this business of saying, ‘Hey, come and stick your product on any part of my news page, and sponsor the whole thing if you like’.”
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