Foreign direct investment in the print media: a barrier or a boon?

As a periodical committed to offer its readers a selective but up-to-date coverage of stories relevant to energy, environment, and sustainable development from more than 25 daily newspapers published from 11 Indian cities, TERI Newswire certainly has more than peripheral interest in the government's recent decision to open up the print medium to FDI or foreign direct investment. Typically, the reaction has been mixed. In Hyderabad, for instance, one Telugu newspaper is reported to have come out strongly against the move whereas another, an English-language daily, has welcomed it. As information and communication technology continues to expand its reach, providing easy, fast, and increasingly cheap access to a wide range of news sources, be it the television channels such as CNN and BBC or web sites such as netscape.com and msn.com, sometimes one wonders whether the debate on the impact of allowing FDI in the print medium on society is largely academic. However, it is not. Given the enormous reach of the print medium, the authority that it commands even now not only because of the decades of tradition but also because of the permanence of print, and its ability to convey subtle and abstract concepts - something that is much harder to accomplish through moving images - the matter can never be purely of academic interest. The increasingly consumerist orientation of Indian society can be attributed in a large measure to the wide reach of television, particularly cable television, not only in space but also in time. It is a reasonable assumption to believe that print will complement such impact. Language has remained a major barrier to the spread of information through the Internet: print can overcome that barrier easily. Newspapers in regional languages command circulation figures that English-language dailies find hard to match. Will publishing in regional languages receive a boost? Will it change its character? What will be its long-term impact? It is early yet but a couple of years down the line, it will be interesting to analyse the contents of TERI Newswire and compare the results with those for the years before the sector was open to foreign investment.