HT Media, one of the oldest and biggest Indian news companies with an annual turnover of more than Rs.1,550 crore and more than 24 locations from which it produces its two dailies Hindustan Times in English, Hindustan in Hindi and Mint, its 6-days a week financial paper, is looking to strengthen its multi-media and multi-channel content. It is trying to integrate its electronic content, and its increasing number of radio broadcast channels together with its traditional print channels. Krishanu Dutta reports.
Akey aspect of the HT Media group’s transformation was its investment in Eidos Methode Version 3.0 editorial software in 2006 for its new financial daily, Mint. At the time, Eidos was not ready with its web portal system but over the years it has made significant improvements to its front end and its usability features. In the past two years the HT Media organization has greatly expanded and renewed its investment in Eidos Methode with perhaps 2,000 seats across all its locations and is now attempting to create a completely integrated newsroom across media channels and publications.
Nicholas Dawes, HT Media’s chief editorial and content officer for the last two and half years, says that some of the changes in the current overhaul include integrating print and digital news operations across titles, bringing its three dailies Hindustan Times, Hindustan, and Mint on a single floor to share a common newsroom in Delhi with common content and digital asset management systems. Dawes who has worked across platforms since the late 1990s was previously editor-in-chief at South Africa’s Mail & Guardian.
Following its earlier investment in Methode for just Mint, HT Media has now comfortably expanded with a very large Methode system. Dawes says, “This new system complements our completely overhauled network infrastructure. At the moment we have a new high-speed network across the country, a new private-cloud infrastructure in Delhi and Noida, and a new public-cloud infrastructure with Amazon web services. So, right now we do have a modern, robust, flexible IT system underneath everything we do. But all of this is there to complement the work that we do and we have not taken the traditional method adopted by some of our peers as we have not gone for a digital-only team. Our aim is to integrate everyone and make our whole newsroom a digital newsroom. This is a rather harder way to adopt and there may be fewer short-term gains. But, we believe, this approach will be the most sustainable and rewarding in the long-term in both digital and print.”
HT Media started integrating the Eidos Methode system in phases from September 2015 onwards. “The print integration is scheduled to start from end April 2016 although several modes are already operational – already reporters can file copy, edit and even plan their reporting on Methode. Any reporter at any location can find out what’s happening anywhere. At the same time it has also smoothened the production processes. But the real gain is that stories can flow more easily to digital than before and enable us to publish stories tailored for the particular medium that we want.”
Dawes says that his primary aim has been to bring more efficiency and coherence to the print operations. “We knew that we needed a print system. Earlier, we had a somewhat jugaad system which had been very unevenly adopted and had limited functionality. When we looked around the marketplace for print systems, we looked for the one which has the most compelling architecture and the most digital-ready way of actually handling, processing and storing information.”
“Methode is a single system for both multichannel knowledge and content management system combined with a web portal. It has a very logical way of structuring and managing information across multiple platforms and since it has been a XML-based system from the start, it is fairly straightforward to integrate. Its features for multiedition management and the integrated page design processes are impressive. There are some print systems in the market which are fairly good at workflow and database, but their actual page production capabilities are more limited.
“However, it is a complex project and the integration processes are time-consuming. Previously, we were not very sure about some aspects of its interface and digital capabilities. But then Eidos Media made some pretty big changes in the front-end to give it a higher degree of usability. It has a browser based client, called Swing, which we like. There are strong planning tools as well. Also, we wanted to be a part of a growing international community. Methode has been adopted at places like Australia, UK and US by companies such as News Corp, Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Financial Times, and The Sun. We like the fact that it is getting more popular and the company is fl exible and importantly evolving for the better. I believe Methode addresses our pain points pretty effectively.”
Dawes says that the aim for HT Media is to become a natural choice for its readers on any platform that they wish to access its content or dailies. “We respect our readers and respect the time that they devote to us. We should be able to meet all their needs and being such a respected news house for so long in this country and being commercially successful also requires a multipronged approach.”
The digital opportunity
India has a special opportunity that other regions of the world have not had which is that Indian companies can innovate and have some invaluable time left to fi nd out the pros and cons of digital while they are still robust print businesses. “India has tremendous digital opportunity now. Our colleagues in the US and Europe have had to innovate and generate new revenue streams out of terror while their primary sources dried up. Indian companies can get on the job on the front foot and be courageous. They can try new things without being too worried if something fails. It is not going to be easier in the future so we should sort these things out while there is still time,” Dawes says.
We may be content companies but we have to come to the realization that we have to make very very significant investments in technology because that is really the core of what the content ready media news business is.
