The document discusses opportunities and challenges facing print media in Sri Lanka. It notes that print media is struggling due to economic challenges like a lack of advertising revenue and global recession. It also faces political challenges like media repression. However, it sees opportunities in new media like websites, blogs, social networking and mobile technologies. If print media wants to survive, it will need to embrace these new technologies, train journalists accordingly, and find new business models to monetize online content and engage citizens as producers of content.

1. Opportunities Challenges
Context
Sanjana Hattotuwa
Senior Researcher, Centre for Policy Alternatives
Ashoka News and Knowledge Entrepreneur

2. HELP WANTED
Immediate Opening!
Sri Lankan newspapers seek individuals who can rescue
print media from impending irrelevance. Qualified
applicants must possess new media skills and understand
web technologies. Getting people to pay for online
content will be added bonus.
Must be able to work from home, on the road and at
office. Mobile phone essential.
Persons resistant to change need not apply.

3. Context

4. ECONOMICS TODAY
Context
Not a happy time. Global recession + local fiscal mismanagement + media
•
repression = fragmented, cash strapped markets
Cover prices and subscriptions do not cover costs of content production
•
Advertisers have a de facto control over print and electronic media
•
Readers of alternative press are not purchasers. Same problem with new
•
media!
Lack of advertising increases costs, decreases market share, volume,
•
distribution and impact

5. ECONOMICS TODAY
Context
may have to shut down. Spectrum will struggle
• Montage
without GoSL ads.
Leader recently had the worst ad revenues in 13 years
• Sunday
Leader shut down, never profitable
• Morning
• WithoutGoSL ads, any publication finds it hard to survive.
GoSL ads only go to State media.
• Vicious cycle of financial crisis

6. Challenges

7. FOES OF FOE
Challenges

8. SCENARIOS
War heightens / risk increases / FOE decreases
•
Violence continues / print & electronic suffer / web media stronger
•
War ends / FOE increases / media freedom flourishes
•
Irrespective of war trajectory, web media grows wider and deeper, including
•
diaspora content production
Terrorism slow burn / status quo continues
•
Journalists leave Sri Lanka / continue to write
•

9. CONVERGENCE | QUAD PLAY
Internet
Challenges
TV
Telephony
Wireless

10. CONVERGENCE CREATES
CENSORS
Challenges
• Tamilnet.com blocked since June 2007
• Teleconferencing disallowed on Suntel
• SMS blocked on independence day / Dialog blocks JNW
• Mobile telephony regularly shut off in embattled areas
• Telcos complying with unwritten MoD diktats?

11. Opportunities

12. 6 DRIVING FORCES
1.Increasing media consumption
Generational
2.Fragmentation
3.Participation
4.Personalisation
Business
5.New revenue models (?)
Technology
6.Broadband availability

13. FUTURE TRENDS
Opportunities
New Media and Citizen Journalism will merge with MSM
•
Consumers will become producers
•
Citizen will become witnesses who report
•
Audiences will fragment, broadcast and distribution will be redefined
•
MSM on the web will become places not static products.
•
News will be a conversation - reported and then responded to.
•
Mobiles will be ubiquitous and everyone will be addressable
•

14. GLOBAL TRENDS

15. WHERE WILL REVENUE COME
FROM?
Accenture, 2007
Monetising user generated content

16. CONTENT CONSUMPTION
Accenture, 2007

17. YOUTUBE.COM
billion video streams watched by 91 million viewers in
•5
September ’08
• Average duration 2.9 minutes
• 44% of online video on Google / YouTube
• Average of 55 videos a month per user
• In July ’08, Americans watched 11.4 billion videos, a total
Source: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2444

18. PRINT OR ONLINE?
Accenture, 2007
Moving away from print and terrestrial to online media

19. PRINT IN ASIA
400,000
300,000
200,000
100,000
0
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Asia Europe North America
Source: Time Magazine, 2 March 2009

20. PRINT VS ONLINE IN SRI LANKA

21. PRINT VS ONLINE IN SRI LANKA

22. HOW THE WEB HAS
CHANGED THE MEDIA
INDUSTRY

23. CNN IREPORT

24. NOWPUBLIC.COM

25. DEMOTIX

26. USTREAM MOBILE

27. FACEBOOK FOR STRONGER SOCIAL
NETWORKING
IFJ campaign to free Tissa
Pissu Poona

28. Source: http://apramana.com/web/top-10-sri-lankan-twitter-users/
TWITTER

29. SRI LANKAN /
DEVELOPING WORLD
TRENDS

30. MOBILE GROWTH IN SRI
LANKA
Mobiles (in millions)
Fixed lines (in millions)
8
6
4
2
Lirneasia
0
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

31. OVERALL
200,000 broadband users
•
Several thousand mobile broadband users
•
3 million fixed lines / 8 million mobiles / 11 million SIMs (Source: Lirneasia)
•
Heavy use of SMS
•
Most newspapers have websites
•
Around 1,000 blogs
•
Facebook groups / social networking vibrant particular in Middle East
•

32. WEB BASED CITIZEN
JOURNALISM IN SRI LANKA

33. INFORMANTS

34. VERNACULAR NEW MEDIA
• Vikalpa YouTube
videos watched hundreds of thousands of
times (~200 from Nokia 93i, ~150 from DV)
• Shortvideo vernacular content more popular than vernacular
blogging
• CPA first with tri-lingual UNICODE website.
• 100+ Sinhala and Tamil blogs on Kottu, out of over 300 in just
the past two years.

35. IS SLPI TEACHING ITS
STUDENTS TO LEVERAGE
WEB 2.0 AND NEW MEDIA?

36. MOBILE / SMS NEWS
1,000 SMS messages
Rs. 8,053 via http://www.intellisms.co.uk
Rs. 1,000 on Dialog

37. IMPACT OF NEW MEDIA: LONG TERM
• Emphasison communicative rights: citizens have a right to
produce and access a wide and diverse range of information
and views that inform them on the main issues of the day.
• Information treated as a public good
• Freedom of expression not simply the media’s right to
publish / produce but the ability and rights to participate in the
discussions

38. IMPACT OF NEW MEDIA: LONG TERM
(LONG TAIL)
• Hyper-local, topic specific media now possible
• Niche content attracts consumers over time
• Niche content archives become valuable over time
• E.g. paddy cultivation best practices in Mahaweli C Sector, surf
conditions in Arugam Bay, garment sector worker’s mobile blog

39. GROUNDVIEWS VS. THE
ISLAND

40. EVOLUTION OF MEDIA
ETHICS
Groundviews vs. The Island (PCC useless in 2007) but Editor asks for
•
reprint permission in 2009
The Sri Lankan blogosphere vs. Lakbima (emergence of a strong new
•
media collective)
MSM journalists will need to recognise blogs are legitimate sources of
•
information - attributing them correctly
Media trust models will need to develop to determine bias of
•
crowdsourced journalism

41. HOW WILL YOU RESPOND
• How will you shape the institution to deal with these trends -
political and technological?
• How will you shape the training to address the development
in media?

42. THANK YOU
sanjana@cpalanka.org