The steep and continuous decline of high margin print advertising has led to significant financial challenges for most newspapers which are cutting costs and trying to find new revenue sources.

There should be a reduction in duplicative layers of article editing, and visual experts must play a primary role in covering some stories. It means more visual journalism. There should be focus on diversity within the manpower so as to reflect the audiences they seek. There is too much duplicative and low-value line editing. If this is removed, there will be reductions in editorial manpower. In print production, there is multi-layered editing in the newsrooms.

A typical newsroom for digital media is a lean structure. It is a smaller and more focused newsroom. Print media must reconfigure its newsroom accordingly.

Abroad, we have seen a decline of the print media owing to the emergence of the digital media. Media there was costly, bulky and was to be picked up from a news-stand as there was no home delivery. India has more than 895 million literate people, and there are only 301 million people who read a publication. Thus one can see the potential for growth. Print media here is aspirational. Written word has the respect. There is this facility of home delivery. Though India’s print media has digital presence, the bulk of its revenues come from newspapers and magazines.

Still, there is slow down in the growth rate of print media in India. Hindustan Times has closed down its Kolkata, Bhopal and Ranchi editions. Many papers are pruning their print runs. There is less recruitment and there is cost cutting. What is seen in the newsrooms of English papers is likely to spread to the vernacular papers. Though print remains the most profitable media segment, it has been losing share. Its share has fallen down from 31 per cent ( 2005 ) to 24 per cent ( 2015 ). Maybe, this slow down will compel the print media to diversify into digital and other formats seriously. India is the one of the last bastions of print media. Even here major national dailies are shutting editions, laying off staff, cutting costs and freezing expansions and investments.

Print media is the only industry in the private sector where government- appointed wage board fixes wages. The recent recommendation has bled a number of print companies to the point of sickness. At least non-journalist staff must be removed from its ambit. The very concept of print journalist no longer exists as journalists have become platform-agnostic, moving from filing for online to writing for print to appearing on TV, all in the course of a single workday.

Under the new GST regime, newspapers must be ensured of zero rating.

The main source of revenue of the print media is advertising. It has shown little growth in the last few years — 4 to 6 per cent as compared to TV’s 15 to 18 per cent and digital’s 35-40 per cent.

There is a sharp increase in overhead costs. The cost of newsprint has increased, especially the imported variety.

Despite all this, Indian newspapers have kept cover prices among the lowest in the world — Rs 3 to Rs. 5 per copy on an average so as to keep them affordable.

Media in general and newspapers in particular are at an inflection point today.

Header bidding has been integrated by Facebook on its platform. It allows mobile web publishers to collect bids and then select the highest offer. It improves upon the original programmatic auctions. Due to advance bidding technology, publishers can make more money and earn up to 10-30 per cent more revenues than programmatic advertising. Obviously, the cost of buying ads on the mobile web are set to go up.

Google’s Doubleclick has already adopted header bidding. Nearly 70 per cent of all publishers now use header bidding. It is a means to optimise yield, cut down on passbacks, increase transparency of inventory value. Doubleclick also eliminates Google’s favouritism for its for its own ad exchange AdX. Advertisers are given opportunity to bid on all available inventory and not just remnant inventory.