Who says newspapers are dying?

A point of discussion in the media industry lately has been the slow
demise of the newspaper industry in the US relative to the upswing of
the newspaper and media industry in "developing" nations like India.
In India within the last couple of years, several business media have
cropped up and are doing fairly well. "While gloom haunts the
newspaper industry in the United States and Europe, the business is
flourishing in much of the developing world," says an article in
today's New York Times.

Another excerpt from this article--
"Executives in India, one of the fastest growing newspaper markets,
say reading a newspaper is something to aspire to instead of a
throwback to a bygone era as it is perceived in much of the West.

"Anyone who can read or write is still looked at with a bit of awe" in
many markets in India, said Rajesh Kalra, a veteran journalist who is
now chief editor of Times Internet, the Internet arm of the Times
Group, which publishes The Times of India. The paper has a circulation
of 3.5 million, more than 10 percent higher than a year ago, and says
it is the biggest English-language paper in the world. Times Group, a
part of Bennett, Coleman and Company, is introducing editions of the
paper in three Indian cities this spring.

When people first learn how to read, they want to let people know, Mr.
Kalra said, and "the first thing you want to do is be seen to be
reading a newspaper."

The literacy rate in India hovers at about 61 percent, according to
Unesco, but the number of literate youths (ages 15 to 24) is above 76
percent, signaling that education is improving. The number of daily
newspapers grew to 287 in 2006 from 185 in 2005, according to the
World Association of Newspapers."

In fact several media companies like CN18 that only had a broadcast
presence are also branching out into print publishing to round out
their offerings, "Media companies in emerging markets, though, are
enjoying growth their Western counterparts can only envy. "Unlike the
developed markets, India is at a fundamentally different stage of its
life" when it comes to media consumption, said Haresh Chawla, group
chief executive of Network 18, a media conglomerate. The company also
has a joint venture with CNBC, as well as with Viacom, which brings
MTV and Nickelodeon to Indian audiences. "There is a huge synergy in
news gathering," and owning a newspaper will round out Network 18's
media offerings, Mr. Chawla said."

Read the full article at--
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/business/worldbusiness/20newspapers.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&oref=slogin

Mills and Boon arrives in India...

All those Mills and Boons we used to devour when we where teenagers in
India. Whether we really liked them or not, peer pressure was in full
force, we had to read all the latest ones so we could talk about them
in college. We used to go to lending libraries and line up outside so
we could borrow the latest M&B's. Now they are moving to India. An
article in the Telegraph says - "Andrew Go, head of Indian operations
of Harlequin Mills & Boon, owned by Canadian giant Tristar, believes
that India could become its largest market. "

An excerpt from this aticle --
"A generation of urban, educated women have devoured Mills & Boon's
romantic fiction since the days of the Raj, but only through Indian
lending libraries and the limited number of titles exported here.

Now the publisher, which sells four books across the world every
second, has tied up with an Indian company to publish its novels here
and distribute them at supermarkets and newspaper kiosks for just 99
rupees (£1.30).

It also plans to launch an Indian series later this year — stories set
in India, about Indians, by Indians. The aim is to conquer the hearts
of 300 million English speakers with its romantic fiction."

Read the full article at --
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/09/wboon109.xml

Another American of part-Indian origin who sets herself apart...

Kirin Kalia is the editor of www.migrationinformation.org. Featured in
the New York Times this article about this magazine that has a "A Tiny
Staff, Tracking People Across the Globe."

An excerpt from this article --
Every moment has its magazine, and for the age of migration it is the
Migration Information Source, a weekly (more or less) online journal
followed worldwide by scholars, policy makers and the occasional
migrant in distress. "My soul's dying every moment," an Iranian asylum
seeker wrote last year in an e-mail message from Greece. "Give me an
answer."

Many readers discover the Source simply by googling the word
"immigrant" and finding a link to migrationinformation.org among the
millions of citations.

At the site's helm is an American-born editor, Kirin Kalia, 32, who
describes herself as "half Dutch, half Indian, 100 percent American
and total migration geek." Ms. Kalia thrives on hybridity — devouring
Indian-American novels and Dutch-Moroccan films — and finds no
migration topic too obscure. To know the fate of Latvian mushroom
pickers in Ireland is, for her, to glimpse the world in a grain of
sand.

"To move to a different country for whatever reason takes so much
courage," she said, interrupting an interview to play a song by a
British-Indian rapper, Panjabi MC, stored on her hard drive. "The fact
that so many people do it is just endlessly fascinating to me."

Read the full article at --
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntget=2008/02/04/washington/04migration.html&tntemail0=y&oref=slogin