Casting A Wider Net

JOURNALISM, declares Salon, one of Internet's new interactive magazines, "has become a pitiful giant, snarled by commercial formulas and political tribalism. Where once its voice shook mountains, it now squeaks cautiously and banally. The Net allows publishers to burst these bonds, to howlagain."

Howl, of course, was Allen Ginsberg's outpouring of rage and protest, also the Beat generation's poetic manifesto that anticipated the counter-culture of the '60s. And now Salon predicts the Internet will do something similar for publishing.

Well, one hopes not. How l died with the Beat generation's hype when the counterculture of the '60s gave way to the greed-is-good culture of the '80s. Hopefully, Internet publications will last longer. Right now they are sprouting all over—150 of them were launched globally last year alone—and seem set to anticipate the culture of the next century.

According to The Economist, most newspapers in the world today are treating Internet as another kind of printing press—another place to dump the last night snapshot of news. The New York Times, the London Times as well as the Sunday Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the Le Monde are already on the Net.

 The Indian wave began with the launch of the weekly international edition of The Hindu, Madras, the first newspaper to go online in end-1995, followed by its sister publication, Business Line. Inspired by their success, Business Standard appeared on the Net in April. The Times of India and The Economic Times soon plan to go online. The Lok Sabha elections provided an ideal peg for most newspapers to launch special editions on the Indian elections. In March this year, The Indian Express launched Election Express. It was soon joined by TOI's, Elections '96 and the Bangalore-based Deccan Herald's special edition on the elections. Says Vivek Goenka, CMD, Indian Express group: "Worldwide, the Indian elections generate substantial interest. No other medium matches the global reach and instantaneous distribution of the Internet. For the first time in Indian history, latest news on the elections was available on the Net." 

Magazines too have lined up in the cyber-race. Ad agency Rediffusion launched Rediff-On-The-Net in February, which it claims is India's first magazine produced solely for Internet. G , a film periodical published by the Chitralekha group, was the first Indian magazine to go online in January this year.

 Ravi Database, a Bombay-based computer firm has a website called India World on the Net, with home pages to give information on all subjects to NRIs. The page called Gifts & Collections enables a person anywhere on the globe to send gifts, from a chocolatecake to a Laxman Shreshtha painting, to anyone in India. The recipient doesn't even have to own a computer, leave alone being on the Net. All one has to do is click on the list of gift items, fill in his credit card number and address with a landmark for easy delivery, and click SEND. "The moment you click, the money is transferred to the bank account. All we do is give the address to the courier. We guarantee delivery of gifts within 72 hours anywhere in India," says Rajesh Jain of Ravi Database. In return for this, they collect a commission of 20 to 30 per cent of the price from manufacturers. 

Similarly, NRI account holders can access the Reserve Bank of India home page on India World's website, and get answers on all possible financial queries which have been simplified into 20 questions that he may have for any of the schemes. India Abroad, the newspaper published in the US, also has a home page on this website with news from India culled from various dailies. India World is also onlining important stories from India Today, Business India, Express Investment Week, and other magazines. 

But despite the proliferation of the Internet publications, the trend is in a nascent stage, since the Internet itself is not very accessible (see box). Says Ajit Balakrishnan, director, Rediffusion: "Rediff-On-The-Net is India's first authentic, interactive on-line service on the Internet, providing news update throughout the day with a dedicated editorial and marketing team. Though we've just launched it, the response has been tremendous." Rediff-On-The-Net has sections on news, business, travel, leisure, entertainment, and a special section for children called The Enchanted Kingdom. For cyberjunkie adolescents, the magazine also has a section called The X-Change.

 The menu of online newspaper editions is no different from the newspapers themselves: front page reports, analyses and briefs, interviews, editorials and edit page articles. The difference is that on the Net surfers can select what they want to read by browsing through listed headlines and moving on without turning any pages. The Hindu also offers the 'Search', where surfers need to just punch in a key word about a subject and all reports that appeared in the paper since June 1995 on that particular subject will be available at the click of a mouse.

The online editions have already begun attracting advertiser attention. The Hindu has separate sections for classified and appointment ads while the Deccan Herald plans to have a classified section. The Indian Exp -ress has small colour panels advertising for Vysya Bank, ICICI and Fem products at the end of reports. The Amul ad on the India World website explains the history of Amul and the cooperative movement in Gujarat.

 But the success of online publications in India is being viewed with scepticism. "The main problem here is access to the Internet. Only a small number of people and companies have access to the Net," says Aneesh Bhanot, a regular Internet user. There are only about 7,000 surfers in India who are known to browse through the Net. Says Jain: "The success of our website can actually be gauged through the foreigners who have easy access to Internet. We mainly cater to the NRIs having easy access to the Net." Rediff-On-The-Net and India World use commercial servers in the US to host the online service. The advantages: lower cost, and faster access for surfers due to higher bandwidths in the US.

The recent cricket World Cup news was accessed by 80,000 people. The website was accessed—'hit', in cyberlingo terms—three million times. G-on-net, claims its associate publisher, had 24,000 hits in January '96 with its launch. In February, it attracted 48,000 hits. They have now introduced audio and video clips. Newspapers are not far behind. Less than a week after the launch of its edition, Deccan Herald registered nearly a 1,000 visitors and 30 letters a day.

 As the race begins, computer geeks-turned-writers are furiously pumping pages of new material. While Salon's prediction of a counter-cultural revolution may be premature, the Net is clearly going to see a crowd of Indian magazines in the near future.