Will the Indian Newspaper Industry follow its US counterparts?

Having worked very closely with one of India's largest Media houses that owns the most distributed English daily and who operates an Internet Business, I can say with confidence that the Indian News Printing Business is headed in the same direction as the US newspaper business - down the deathward spiral :)

Marc Andreesen has a very nice entry in his blog titled Inaugurating the New York Times Deathwatch
More reading on this topic at http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/

I am a straight shooter and my insights into this business is purely based on my real world experience working with companies in this line of business. The reasons I believe that the Indian Newspaper business will become irrelevant are:

1. Leadership has a Journalism background - Most of the leadership in these companies is tenured gray haired journalists who paid their dues in the Print business and believe that the Internet model is very similar to the traditional print business. There isn't a single technology based Internet company that has had journalists as leaders. All of us saw the case of Terry Semel, the gray haired Media Industry Suit (not even a Journo) run Yahoo! to the ground. This breed believes in old school journalism and don't believe that Internet companies are all about delivering quality journalism using the the best technology.

2. Cannot disrupt their cash cow(Newspapers) - Successful Internet companies were created when something was disrupted for something better, faster, cheaper. However, traditional media houses cannot even start to think of the inevitable end of their cash cow business.

3. Lack of appreciation for technology - Since these companies are typically run by media industry suits or journalists and not the technologists who are viewed as the second class citizens in these organizations, all critical decision making is handled by the the non-techie kind.

4. Inability to qualify, attract, retain talent - since the management of these companies is so caught up in promoting their own kind (media suits or journalists), they cannot attract good technical talent to create and run their own Internet Service. In my own experience, this large media house that I worked with introduced me to a high flying CTO that they had hired who was an expat from the US and claimed to be the god of Java, the designer of Sun's coolest Hardware architecture and Scott McNealy's personal advisor. The first 5 minutes I spent with this guy basically told me that he had little to no background in technology and was a great conman. Some statements he made and I quote them verbatim:

" You know Java just sucks. I told Scott (McNealy) to just kill it"
" Why is your software so bloated? (he was referring to Zimbra) I wrote an Entire ERP system in Java that fits on a floppy"
" You know I had an idea that a VC offered US$1B for but I turned it down as I wanted to make it real and get a higher valuation" - this was classic, if I were him, I would have taken the US$1B for the idea :-)

Anyway, I walked away from that meeting shaking my head in utter disbelief and wondering how such large successful businesses could hire such conmen. But then on further analysis, I realized that these companies don't have the talent that can spot the technologists that will drive them into the history books of success and hence end up with people at senior technical roles that could alter a companies course completely due to their incompetence. A year after this episode, this CTO was fired and the media company filed a lawsuit to try and recover money from him. I think the CTO was smart, came from the US, enjoyed a fat expat package and took the naive company for a big ride.

5. Lack of understanding of equitable partnerships - A lot of Indian Media houses because of their sheer might and questionable ethics get away with very good deals for themselves and leave the partners (typically small startups or technology providers) to eat the crumbs. An undernourished ecosystem is as good as dead. I have seen this behavior time and again in the large companies in India who treat smaller companies like dirt. This behavior is further re-inforced as self funded or poorly funded startups desperate for cash who are not mature enough to understand contracts or hire lawyers to help understand the contracts simply sign on the dotted line. Very soon these startups die and the big Media house that just bet its core service on this company are now looking for other small startups to prey on. My message to startup founders is to be very vary of un-equitable partnerships. Have the courage to walk away from a bad deal. It doesn't matter how big or famous the partner you are working with is.

The largest media houses in India are still privately owned and not public companies. There is little to no visibility into their financials. I believe an Industry that has not been transparent to the Public is doomed to begin with. March on to your Deathward Spiral.......