MAM
From a Print-Society to a Cyber-Society
Today, newspapers are known to carry nothing but yesterday’s old news with fresh and often smelly ink. They are commonly treated like unnecessary fuel for our recycling bins. This mighty medium of the classy period of the print-society is gasping for the last breath in the cyber-society of today.
If Benjamin Franklin, were he alive today, would throw off his visor and scream at the transition occurring currently from a print-society to a cyber one and settle to fly kites to confirm if there is still lightening bolts left in our imagination.
It was only a hundred years ago, at the dawn of the print-society, where words, nicely arranged and neatly printed on newsprint, were sold to a select and literate few. That’s how the power of knowledge and influence was fertilized in the broadsheets, sprinkled though the elite gossip machines and eventually picked by the commoners. Much later, or only a decade ago, most newspapers, weighty and tossed at every second doorstep, still carried the germination of well-branded ideas, and still carried the power to keep our societies glued.
Facing the Truth
But today, embedded in a new cyber-society, newspapers are known to carry nothing but yesterday’s old news with fresh ink. They are commonly treated like unnecessary fuel for our recycling bins. This mighty medium of the classy period of the print-society is gasping for the last breath in the cyber-society of today. The days of the newspaper business are numbered.
Like the evolution of any other cultural tsunami, the denial of the newspapermen and their continued resistance to change has only prolonged this agony. Years ago, they vigorously fought against the use of color pictures as being too tacky for journalistic words. Second, they resisted Web sites as cop-outs to the new medium of the Internet and demanded outrageous fees, but later succumbed to free deals.
Now they are in denial in accepting this as one of the final rounds in a fight to survive. Newspapers may always be with us in some form, but they will cease to serve as the principal backbone of the media.
Time to Fly Kites
What newspapers do today is not very different from what they did a hundred years ago. A great but cumbersome process started with Franklin fully relying on Gutenberg’s moveable type and flat presses, but, as later fully exposed by Marshall McLuhan, this process is now simply being replaced by YOU. Now, you can do some research and write up some ideas and e-mail all of that to a selected list of people in seconds. Essentially, that’s news distribution.
The noble concept of growing trees and pulping them to make paper and to further go through another 1,000 steps to bring that branch of the tree into tabloid shape to be inked, read, and further recycled is dead.
Last Rites
The so-called media barons and the newspapermen controlling the governments are becoming almost mythical. The traditional media is losing its power and impact to the Internet. In time, this whole issue of centralized domination of the media will be transformed into fragmented and widely scattered information points controlled by individuals and their distribution and broadcast presence on the global e-commerce circuitry. This will result in a change from selected media-barons to masses of new information-barons controlling the information pulse.
The new generation likely has no idea what this article is even talking about. Today, the newspaper can’t deliver branding and marketing messages effectively and the business has become very expensive. The role of paper in the process of boosting corporate image and brand name identities has shrunken, with that role now shifting to the realms of e-commerce and other cyber-branding mediums. With circulation shrinking, ad sales flat and a dark future, some desperately require face-saving strategies to save some established brands. At the same time, they need to reinvent themselves with some new cyber-branding strategies and name identities if they wish to survive in the long run.
Key Questions
In most cases, where newspaper can’t compete with instant news and information, it might be better to shrink the publication into a monthly newsmagazine with good indexing of the past events with analysis. Furthermore if the centralized editorial control and well-branded partisan ideologies were also failing then it could be wise to make them free-flow content generators for the free-flow Internet medium. If the classical structure of the antiquated newspaper company were to melt then would it really transform into a modern cyber-office and blend with the modern times? Well, the last quarter-of-a-century saw more businesses change and evolve than any other period. Newspapers are not excluded.
Though newspapers still have the largest grassroots-level coverage of events and are very much read by seniors and the aging population, the question is how long that loyalty will last. In my view, the new generation has no appreciation or even understanding of the entire process of news distribution.
Lastly, there is one positive aspect of the cyber-society, and that is, the truth is often simple and very straightforward. Finally, we’re seeing the manipulative and intentionally deceptive slants in newswriting to be rejected by the masses. The real truth is now increasingly being delivered like a messiah to our overly glutted earth.
Why not save the trees, the toil and the ink? Just hit the send button and distribute your own news. After all no newspaper would dare to print this article.
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
