ABOUT NEWS PAPERS INDUSTRY

Introduction to the Newspapers Industry:

Every morning when we get up, after finishing our daily work, we rush for reading the newspaper to know the happenings around the world. This speaks the importance of newspapers. Even today, when we have a lot of alternatives to know the news we still prefer to read newspapers. But newspapers didn’t come into existence in this world suddenly. It took centuries for the newspapers to come in the form of today. Let us have a look in the evolution of this important source of information. At first the paper was developed and then the newspaper came into being.

Newspapers: Definition, Meaning and its importance

Newspaper is a publication that appears regularly and frequently, and carries news about a wide variety of current events. Organizations such as trade unions, religious groups, corporations or clubs may have their own newspapers, but the term is more commonly used to refer to daily or weekly publications that bring news of general interest to large portions of the public in a specific geographic area.

General-circulation newspapers play a role in commerce through the advertisements they carry; they provide readers with information of practical value, such as television schedules, weather maps and listings of stock prices; and these newspapers provide a source of entertainment through their stories and through such features as comic strips and crossword puzzles. However, one of the most important functions of the general-circulation newspaper -- a crucial function in a democracy -- is to provide citizens with information on government and politics.

Leaving newspapers free to perform this function was considered important enough by the first Congress so that they specifically protected it in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, ratified in 1791, which, among its other guarantors of free expression, prohibits Congress from passing any law "abridging the freedom...of the press." In 1787 Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote, "...were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

Compared with many other developing countries, the Indian press has flourished since independence and exercises a large degree of independence. In 2001, India had 45,974 newspapers, including 5364 daily newspapers published in over 100 languages. The largest number of newspapers were published in Hindi (20,589), followed by English (7,596), Marathi (2,943), Urdu (2,906), Bengali (2,741), Gujarati (2,215), Tamil (2,119), Kannada (1,816), Malayalam (1,505) and Telugu (1,289). The Hindi daily press has a circulation of over 23 million copies, followed by English with over 8 million copies.

Local Indian Newspapers

Ahmedabad (Gujarat)

Assam Tribune (Guwahati)

Central Chronicle (Bhopal)

Daily Excelsior (Jammu)

Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad)

Deccan Herald (Bangalore)

Deepika (Kerala)

Dharitri (Bhubaneswar)

Ganashtaki (Calcutta)

Gomantak Times (Panjim)

Greater Kashmir (Srinigar)

Gujarat Plus

Kashmir Observer (Srinigar)

Kashmir Times (Jammu)

Kaumudi (Kerala)

Malayala Manorama (Kerala)

Mid-Day Mumbai (Bombay)

Mumbai Grapevine (Bombay)

Navhind Times (Panjim)

New Kerala

News Today (Chennai)

Orissa India (Bhubaneswar)

Pioneer (New Delhi)

INDIAN NEWS MEDIA:

Compared to many other developing countries, the Indian press has flourished since independence and exercises a large degree of independence. Many of India's great English-language newspapers and some of its Indian-language (mofussil) press were begun during the nineteenth century. After India became independent, ownership of India's leading English-language newspapers was transferred from British to Indian business groups and the fact that most English-language newspapers have the backing of large business houses, has contributed to their independence from the government. The Indian press has experienced impressive growth since independence. In 1950 there were 214 daily newspapers, with forty-four in English and the rest in Indian languages. By 1990, the number of daily newspapers had grown to 2,856, with 209 in English and 2,647 in indigenous languages. The expansion of literacy and the spread of consumerism during the 1980s fuelled the rapid growth of news weeklies and other periodicals. By 1993 India had 35,595 newspapers--of which 3,805 were dailies--and other periodicals. Although the majority of publications are in indigenous languages, the English-language press, which has widespread appeal to the expanding middle class, has a wide multi-city circulation throughout India.

Following are the four major financial dailies in India:

Financial dailies:

Business Standard:

Business Standard is the country's most respected business daily, being the first choice of serious business readers. It is published in colour from seven centers in India - Mumbai (formerly Bombay), New Delhi, Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), Bangalore, Chennai (formerly Madras), Ahmedabad and Hyderabad. The newspaper believes in free, fair and independent journalism and strives to inculcate these values in its editorial staff. The journalism practised by Business Standard lays equal stress on quality, credibility and accuracy. The Financial Times of London has taken an equity stake in BSL. Business Standard has the country's best economic journalists and columnists working for it. It is edited by T.N. Ninan, perhaps India’s best-known business journalist, who had earlier undertaken a complete and highly successful revamp of The Economic Times and was responsible for its phenomenal growth. Among the other senior journalists in the team are A. K.Bhattacharya, former editor of The Pioneer and associate editor of The Economic Times, and Shyamal Majumdar, former resident editor of The Financial Express. Business Standard’s stable of specialist contributors includes some of the sharpest minds in economics and business. Among them: Shankar Acharya, former chief economic advisor, government of India, Subir Gokarn, chief economist, Crisil, Deepak Lal, professor of economics, UCLA, Bibek Debroy, director, Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, Suman Bery, director-general, National Council of Applied Economic Research, Alexander Nicoll, assistant director, International Institute for Strategic Studies, and Arvind Singhal, chairman, KSA Technopak. The newspaper’s columnists include Surjit Bhalla, TCA Srinivasa-Raghavan, Sunil Jain and AV Rajwade. The company sees content creation, content processing and content management as its core competence. It offers complete outsourcing solutions for organizations which want to bring out in-house or private publications but lack the people and/or resources to do it cost-effectively.

The Financial Express:

Established in 1961, the Financial Express is one of the most in-depth and incisive national business dailies. It offers comprehensive coverage of economic policy, business developments and market trends. In doing so, it encourages readers to make informed, empowered financial decisions. With editions in Delhi, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Kolkata, Kochi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad, The Financial Express is also the only pink vernacular business daily published in Gujarat out of Ahmedabad.

FE’s columnist line up includes some of the best-known names in their respective fields. S Narayan, former finance secretary and economic advisor to PM, Jayaprakash Narayan, member of the PM’s Economic Advisory Council, Nirvikar Singh, Professor of Economics, University of California, Robert Shiller, Yale University - Department of Economics, and Joseph Nye, Havard University, to mention a few. In addition, The Financial Express has pioneered two special awards: ‘The FE Women in Business Awards’ recognize women achievers in business, management and the knowledge economy. ‘The fe Best Bank Awards’ is based on the Best Bank Survey that was incorporated in 1996-97, and is now into its ninth edition. Over time, the survey has come to be acknowledged in banking and financial circles as the definitive word on industry and its performance.

Economic times:

Economic times is a group of Indiatimes is part of India's largest media and entertainment house, the Bennett and Coleman Company Ltd. One of the most respected business houses in India; the 168-year-old group is a market driver across all media platforms. Indiatimes was founded with a simple belief - to create world-class media product and services. Our mission stems from the belief that consumer experience is critical to our success. Team Indiatimes strives to create multiple relationships with global Indian. To do that Indiatimes commanders and strategists wear multiple hats, think disruption, and reinvent themselves every week. The group's brands include: The Times of India - World's largest broadsheet English daily The Economic Times - India's largest and world's second largest financial daily Radio Mirchi - India's largest FM radio network Planet M - India's largest chain of music stores Zoom - Lifestyle television channel Times Now - Television News channel (in association with Reuters) Femina - India's largest women's magazine (published in association with BBC) Filmfare - India's largest English film magazine (published in association with BBC).

Business line:

Business line Financial daily from THE HINDU Group of publications. Kasturi & Sons Ltd., (KSL) is the holding company of The Hindu group of publications. This organization’s first publication -- The Hindu, started as a weekly in 1878 then became a daily in 1889 is widely read and always trusted. The Hindu played a major role during the Indian Independence Struggle. The corporate office of KSL is situated at Chennai (Madras), the cultural capital of India. With the spread of their offices in major cities of India, KSL publishes and distributes a number of group publications all over the country and abroad. The correspondents all over the world bring the international news to the readers. The news and views enjoyed by readers through the print editions are now available to the Global readers through the Net editions of the Hindu and Business Line.

Introduction to the Title of the project work:

Marketing is becoming more attractive at the company, state, national and international levels. In the early days, there was no difference between ‘selling’ and ‘marketing’. But today the difference between these two terms has been clearly made.

Many organizations have involved in developing marketing activities to satisfy the needs and wants of a group of customers. This ‘segment’ concept has helped in the development of new products and services, and also specialization in selling is being attained. With the development of new markets and new avenues of selling, a wide variety of consumer goods has been designed and developed, and for many the ‘marketing’ has become a good profession.

The developing nations are giving much importance for marketing, to develop their internal and external markets. Even the socialist countries have started studying the marketing concepts in a scientific way to introduce them actively in their internal distribution system.

Marketing is quite an old profession. But still by assuming new dimensions, it looks new and is attracting many people to this profession. This is a paradox. With the introduction of ‘Barter Exchange’, the market activity started functioning. But, marketing has seen the light of the day only in the early part of the twentieth century.

Although economics, the mother of marketing, contained all the processes of market, it did not expose the ideas properly. Because of this, marketing developed as a new area of study and practice in the twentieth century. It has passed through many phases and is aiming to attain new heights. The term market share came into being once the size of the company and size of the market started growing.

In simple terms, market share means out of the entire sales in a particular product category in a geographical area, how much sales a company is having. In other words, market share speaks about the position of a company in a particular product category market segment, its reputation, and brand image of the company’s product. Larger the market share a company is having, the better the company will be. The value of the company will be more; it will survive for a longer period of time. In the newspapers industry the competition among the players are very tough. In such a highly competitive financial newspapers segment it is essential to know the current status of the market share of a company and how to go about the improvement in it. It is the market share which makes a company market leader in a particular product category. It speaks about the performance of the company.