News and entertainment: have the twain met?

Good old news. Whether news is seen as entertainment or it is news that informs, news has been a gripping subject down the ages. Debates about news being entertainment and not really ‘news’ have generated hours - and reams - of discussion. The only difference is that the platform under scrutiny has been changing - from print to television and now, digital.

So, is the digital news media in the business of entertainment or are entertainment platforms masquerading as news providers? Or, is it fair to sit in judgement at all? Especially as the audience is getting younger and younger and is changing established notions of what is news. What better way to explore this story than getting seasoned media professionals from two of the biggest names in the media business and one young disruptor of the news game on stage to talk about it.

Nilanjana Bhaduri Jha, chief content officer, Hindustan Times Digital, Rajesh Kalra, chief editor, Times Internet and Sattvik Mishra, CEO & co-founder, ScoopWhoop come together - in Digipub World’s second edition held on September 20th and 21st - to confabulate. The panel discussion was moderated by Vanita Kohli Khandekar, consulting editor, Business Standard.

Have we gone too far with making news an entertainer? And who is the user? Jha’s viewpoint is that the user is the editor. He sets the lines on how the coverage is to be laid out. “But I think there is a case for making news simple and bringing it down to the last common denominator,” she said. ScoopWhoop, for instance, looks at things differently. Mishra believes that “news is very subjective. For an 18-year-old, a death on GOT (Game of Thrones) is the biggest piece of news. For a 25-year-old, who is interested in sport and is a Man U fan, what happened in EPL is news. For a 30-year-old interested in politics, Modi meeting Trump is the biggest news.”

Kalra believes that people want to read what they want to read. “I am not going to sit here and decide what they must read. We will give them everything let the choice be theirs. People search for things and sometimes these are things which we don’t think is readable. Of course, for the home page we have editors sitting and deciding on the priority list should read like,” he pointed out.

“I agree with Rajesh,” interjected Mishra. “And digital becomes such an interesting medium to tell these stories because there is an insane amount of personalisation that can happen. For instance, I have been consuming news on PubG for the last 15 days (in fact, I got late for the panel because I was playing PubG). Fortunately, news is becoming entertaining. I don’t know if the reasons are right or wrong.” Jha highlighted a research that HT Digital had conducted. According to it, most users did not see a difference between news on Priyanka Chopra and a political story.

Kohli-Khandekar pointed out a very common truism with respect to a consumer’s wants. “Consumers,” she said, “are not always honest about what they want. How much of this ‘I will follow the consumer because of the way the web is’ is more accurate than a sampled survey? How much of this binds the news providers and doesn’t allow them to experiment enough?

Kalra observed that this happens among journalists as well. “Very often, we write for our editors and peers and not for the reader. It is an echo chamber that you are very fond of. And you are writing for the people who will come back with the feedback that you want.” In that case, would not a news provider want to draw the line, considering the flurry of fake news that have kicked up a storm in the universe?

“Fake news is a big challenge,” agreed Kalra. “We have recently started an initiative called Times Fact Check. In the last 10 days we have identified only one real news piece out of 45 that we scanned.” Mishra felt that the onus was on distribution channels. “It is important for people like Google and FB to work with credible partners and help make sure that their content is seen farther and wider. If not, there will be repeats of fraud like Macedonian companies churning out fake news. Distribution partners need to pay publishers to create content on their platforms. Unless that happens the quality of content on distribution channels is not going to go up,” opined Mishra.

Training journalists not to fall for fake news is a reality. “Even as we talk about personalisation or throwing all the content there and letting the user decide the newsroom remains relevant as you have journalists getting trained every day to not put out stuff that is not credible,” said Jha.

Is the danger more when digital media go in for branded content or native advertising? “Putting brands in a news item it will not make sense and you are doing a disservice to the reader,” pointed out Mishra, adding, “Publishers are gravitating towards entertainment is because it is easier to monetise that content and put the brand within that storytelling. You have to say that this is branded content - you can’t fool the reader into believing he is reading an editorial piece while you are getting paid by a brand to create that content.”

Native advertising, on the other hand, is the only form of advertising that complements the consumption of content. Traditionally, advertising is always interrupted consumption - whether it is a radio ad or a TV ad. “In native, you are complementing the consumption of content,” Mishra clarified. Stated upfront, it works wonders. “Users will thank you for informing them about sponsored content,” said Jha. Kalra felt that, often, the reader does not care if it is a sponsored content or an agency content. If the content is good they will consume it. “On our properties we have a very clear disclaimer but often the quality of content that comes from them is not bad. So sometimes I am okay with not carrying the disclaimer since the piece is so good.”

News or entertainment, people have begun demanding quality content. And they are willing to pay for it. Talking about quality, Mishra had an interesting take considering that ScoopWhoop’s audience is relatively much younger than the other two. Take a serious issue like the Budget and reporting on it. “In the last two years, we have been breaking the budget down and making it relevant for an 18-year-old too. For instance, why would an 18-year-old care about the budget. But if we say a bottle of Old Monk has gone up from X to X+2, or that a weekend movie trip with your girlfriend has gone up to ABC because of a hike in the entertainment tax, there will be interest. During last year’s budget we had 5 million hits in less than three days. Simplifying news and making it relevant does make a difference.”

Navbharat Times too found interesting ways of covering the Budget, four years ago. “They did a ‘Kya Mehnga? Kya Sasta?’ module. This year, we had a game for the Budget: are you smarter than Arun Jaitley? We had 20 questions like: he will raise tax from this to this. Do you agree? You use a slider to tell your answer and you get an instant feedback.” It worked well.

News, over time, was broadly defined as something that is supposed to educate, inform and entertain. In today’s online world, it is just the order of the last three words that has changed. And many in the business accept it provided it is not fake.

Digipub World 2018 is partnered by - Timesnownews.com (platinum partner); Akamai and Facebook (silver partners); and Freshworks, Vidooly, comScore, Quintype, Times Internet, and 24 Frames Digital (bronze partners).