Indian media can do better on intl coverage: Louise Roug

The redaction techniques in Indian media make for an interesting read. Well-illustrated colourful stories, diversified columns and opinion pieces that act like adornments to the newspapers, all combine to make it similar to the presentation style that’s in vogue in the United Kingdom, opines Louise Roug, Global News Editor of Mashable, one of world’s biggest and most proactive media organisations that is headquartered in New York.

In town on an official visit, Louise contends that the diversity of vernacular press with millions of copies in print circulation, the unassailable prevalence of not one or two, but a multitude of English news journals and the speed at which India’s social media adoption is progressing, speak volumes of the vast media industry that is as much global as it is local.

However, the global news coverage is not something that finds adequate coverage by way of space in many journals here, laments the lady who has been there and done that.

“Indian media is vibrant, dynamic but (except a handful journals) it probably could do better on the international coverage”, she adds from her experience as the US and World News coverage editor at Mashable.

Louise, who has also been associated with elite publications like Los Angeles Times, Newsweek and The Daily Beast, exhorts the use of social media to supplement the activity on traditional media channels. Recalling how “Narendra Modi’s Twitter campaign was a huge success”, she adds “If a politician is on Twitter (or Facebook, for that matter), you should be on Twitter too. You should be smarter than the politician. That’s the best way to keep pace.”

Another eminent journalist Alex Howard, founder of E Pluribus Unum, who has contributed on matters of critical interest to the likes of Forbes, The Huffington Post, National Journal, etc., says there’s no paucity of electronic and print media journalists, but there seems to be a dearth of social networking presence. His funda is plain and simple-put them together and you get ‘social’ journalists.

In the digital era where information availability is funded by technology, and prevailed by the magnetic impact of social media platforms, a good journalist foreseeing the future of journalism become more social, aver the two.
Journalism in coming years, according to Louise, will be excessively driven and governed by social media with Facebook, Twitter, and similar apps warranting a more central role.

As she puts it, ‘the world is changing and so are the dynamics of the media industry, and the best way to keep pace is to stay social’. They do have a point there. It is time Indian media personnel try to take cue and make changes that prevail globally to ensure a farther reach.

By: Syed Khaled Shahbaaz