Number13

Notwithstanding their grandstanding on matters of rights and justice, India’s media houses didn’t hesitate much to cull their weak and vulnerable workforce in the pretext of Covid-19. The murders in the media room continue

Ever since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, ‘lean and mean’ has been the favourite mantra of corporate companies. The Indian media industry has been no different. Albeit all the grandstanding taken in several social issues, newspaper publishers seem to not have blinked an eye before culling their workforce and leaving them in lurch. It has been 21 days into June and the month has already seen at least five national media houses sacking journalists. Termination threats loomed large before several unsuspecting editorial and non-editorial staff who were ‘asked to resign’ one fine morning. The latest wave of retrenchment measures comes after a spree of layoffs and salary cuts in the previous month. Clearly, the Indian media houses seem in no mood to put an end to the bloodbath.

The latest such incident is from The Hindu, one of the largest English newspapers in the country. When a crisis of unprecedented nature was unfurling on one side, the ‘Mahavishnu of Mount Road’ showed no mercy and reportedly laid off an unknown number of staffers across bureaus and brands, including senior top editors and bureau chiefs. Reports suggest that in the Mumbai bureau alone, about 25 employees were asked to leave by June 30. This comes after the 142-year-old organisation introduced salary cuts up to 25% in May.

Hindu and Hindustan

It was just last month that IRS results showing The Hindu as as the fastest growing English daily in India, that too for the fourth time in a row, came out. Adding 4,61,000 readers nationally, it recorded a 6% growth in Total Readership and 4% growth in Average Issue Readership against the corresponding quarters in the previous year. Interestingly The Hindu was also the first big Indian mainstream news publisher to put its content behind a paywall. Apparently none of those helped the publisher during the financial crisis caused by the pandemic. Or did the pandemic only exacerbate the existing fault lines of a faulty business model?

After firing about 150 employees, including managing editor and other senior journalists, in the last week of May, Hindustan Times reportedly forced 13 journalists at its Mumbai edition to resign on June 9. The crisis was visible not just at newspaper companies. On June 17, reports came out about an internal mail by Aroon Purie, the owner of India Today group, which publishes India’s largest circulated English magazine. The mail reportedly announced salary cuts, layoffs and shutting down of non-core magazines like Harper’s Bazaar and India and Brides Today.

“Some publications, editorial and business initiatives will cease. Accordingly, we would be reducing our staff strength. Those we have to part ways with will be informed individually. Further, starting this month, there will be a reduction in staff salaries across the board with senior members of our team taking the biggest cuts,” the mail read.

Apparently among the organisations that sacked its journalists are also newer kids in the block like Firstpost and Asiaville. However, the issue gets murkier when it comes to the print players.

In 2019, The Hindu witnessed about 17% jump in readership, according to IRS data, and was positioned at number 2 among all English language newspapers in the country. IRS results in December 2019 showed HT as the most-read English newspaper in Delhi and NCR, and the second most read in Mumbai. Times of India has been adorning the position of the largest-circulated and most-read English newspaper in the country for years. But the stalwarts of the news industry failed to translate those numbers into revenues. India’s print media, which boasts of the legacy of hundreds of years, have always shied away from building a sustainable revenue model. For long, they ignored the warnings and relied heavily on advertisers to subsidise the costs for readers.

Fall in ad revenue

Meanwhile, on the other side, by the 1990s, the same companies started hiring journalists on contract/consultant basis to circumvent The Working Journalist Act, 1955, that offered journalists protection from firing at will by the employers. With no strong unions in the industry and organisations like the Press Council of India and Editors Guild remaining mute spectators more or less, the process has been carried on till date largely unopposed. When the pandemic hit came the moment of truth. The inflow of advertisements stopped. The grand old English newspapers of India protected themselves by passing the buck on to the employees, providing them barely any breathing time to find alternative options.

So what will now happen to the print media of India? Unlike a New York Times, there’s no proven digital business model here yet. Unlike in Australia or Canada, there are no conversations about bringing in legislation to make the big tech platforms pay the publishers for news. And like everywhere else, the media owners show little empathy towards their employees. Without a robust business model, the print industry of India could be sucked down the vortex like elsewhere in the world.

Read Part 1 of the series here