e Magus

N ewspaper websites designs are defined by 2 key features - Order and Regularity (of content updates) Since most of the newspaper websites are dead ringer of their offline version..it comes with a baggage of having the same design/mastheads, editorial, colour schema, culture, language, etc. Order is built into the website design to replicate the above features..Thus like an actual newspaper content spread, you have sections built - Home page, International section, National section, Sports section, etc... Added to it, large quantity of content updates on a regular - if not realtime basis... Looking at the above points, it would seem, on the face of it, that technological impact on newspaper website design would be minimal. While it is challenging to re-look at design of newspaper website; with the technological advancement and the change in the user behaviour of consuming content online, there are things that can be done without compromising on the publication’s overall vision and...

An unfortunate incident that happened in Delhi on Dec 16th has woken up the people leading to mass protests, condemnation, and public debates on state of affairs in the country.  Every News channel and publication was up-in-arms generating enough coverage about the incident and its aftermath asking for reforms, justice, safety, and change in social attitudes towards women… What, perhaps, more defining is the way the role of News media has changed over the years… The media has evolved from carrier of News to creator of News. Before the advent of Television, News publications had a single point agenda of bringing news to the homes.. News items of importance were gathered, collated, curated by bunch of editors and then published for public consumption… With the penetration of Television, the recency of news - Breaking News, and updates on real-time basis was carried forward by the newer medium…and Newspapers had a secondary role to play in terms of being news carrier…they soon adapte...

I’m sure the following scenarios would be familiar to most people… If you look carefully at what is being said or written in the Media (Television / Newspapers)… news on “My Name is Khan” – the movie, about Shah Rukh Khan’s comments and many other related titbits. Few months back it was Sashi Tharoor and about what he said (the cattle class comments), and what he was saying thereof. Another regular feature in the news channels happens to be what the latest tweets are on specific topics or current events… suddenly you see that Twitter is also about content… The idea of Twitter was to provide a simple platform for the online users to update their status; and for their friends and followers to see and respond. The idea of keeping it under 140 characters was to make the integration with existing SMS platforms easier…. The idea has been very successful, and people have started taking on to Twitter a big way… The stats say that almost 40-45% of Twitter traffic is from Mobile platforms and th...

Are we at a cusp of media upheaval? Are we soon going to see a war betting the old (traditional) media vs. new (Online) media?? Rupert Murdoch, speaking at the World Media Summit in Beijing, was mentioning that Search Engines and other content aggregators need to pay for any news reports or articles they currently take for free He said “The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content”. A Media Mogul whose company owns newspapers, other publications and TV channels across the globe, his view comes as ominous. He was particularly harsh on Search Engine like Google, Yahoo! And other websites like Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook While Mr. Murdoch and other media companies are right that there is a price for the content they create. As content owners they need to be compensated for exploitation of the original content for commercial purpose. Having started my career with a media company, I have been taught and now know that there is nothing ...