Facing an acute financial crisis with their advertisement revenues drying up due to the unrest and shutdown since early July, newspapers published in the Kashmir Valley are struggling to survive and remain in business.
Newspapers to Go Digital
Hit hard by decreasing advertising revenue, an English language daily, Kashmir Observer, has decided to go digital with a multimedia edition and widen its reach in the virtual world.
As Kashmir battles another bout of unrest, now in its fifth month, media houses in the Valley are facing a financial crisis as advertisement flow from the market has virtually been zero. We’re now diverting a major chunk of our resources for digitisation to reduce print costs.Sajjad Haider, Editor, Kashmir Observer
As businesses remained mostly shut for the last five months, both big and small business houses have drastically cut down on their costs, including advertisements.
‘Investing in Advertisements Not Feasible’
"We find it difficult even to pay our staff. Investing in advertisements is a luxury we cannot afford unless our businesses recover," said the owner of a hotel that has remained closed almost for the entire summer, the peak tourist season in the Valley.
The state government has also reduced its daily flow of advertisements for newspapers because everything came to a standstill after the 8 July killing of militant commander Burhan Wani that led to violent protests and shutdowns spearheaded by separatist leaders.
Bashir Manzar, editor of the Kashmir Images daily, said there has been little or no developmental work in the Valley in the past five months and so "the government had very little to publicise.”
"Most of the advertisements are about developmental works and naturally when everything was halted, we had no reason to demand more," Manzar told IANS.
He, however, added that the government was holding back previous dues, which "further complicated the crisis".
Manzar has not yet thought of alternate revenue generation but admitted that "continuing with what is being done (relying only on print for revenue) cannot even allow us to survive".
Haider agreed and said remaining in circulation through just the print edition is a challenge local newspapers may not be able to meet for long.
Digitisation the Only Way Ahead
"The main objective of going digital is to diversify channels to generate badly needed revenue," Haider said.
Devang Shah, executive director of Kashmir Observer Digital, said the edition would feature videos, people's views, conversations, debates and analyses "that will go beyond the obvious and the apparent".
The editor said this was being done to exploit the untapped market, both nationally and internationally, that craves for visual media from Kashmir.
What is true for Kashmir Observer holds good as well for other big and small vernacular and English language dailies and weekly newspapers.
English dailies with large circulations like Greater Kashmir, Rising Kashmir, Kashmir Monitor, Kashmir Images and Urdu dailies like Kashmir Uzma, Aftab, Srinagar Times and Chattan have so far not purged staff, but have cut down heavily on their print runs.
All newspapers in the valley are facing one of their worst crises at present. The state government advertisements to newspapers have also been cut to a mere 10 percent of what these used to be before the unrest. It is a crisis situation a publisher or the editor simply does not know how to get out of.Tahir Mohiuddin, editor of Chattan
(Published in an arrangement with IANS)
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