【聯合報╱By MAX BEARAK╱張佑生譯】
Web News Companies Chase Growth in India
Newspapers are everywhere in India. At breakfast tea joints in cities, people sip chai and unfold their broadsheets, which they lay out over older newspapers, used as a tablecloth, before reaching for samosas packed in makeshift to-go bags, themselves fashioned out of folded and stapled newsprint.
Yet, in a juxtaposition typical of India’s stratified modernization, growth in digital media is exploding at the same time. Samir Patil has spent most of the last decade adapting print media into digital successes.
Seven years ago, he bought India’s most prominent comic book publisher, whose sales were flagging, and had versions of its books animated and broadcast on the Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel in India. Scroll.in, his latest startup, is part of an emerging batch of online news media in India.
Scroll.in offers analysis and reporting on Indian politics and culture, presented in an infinite scroll format. In the three months after its launch in January, a million unique users visited Scroll. in, more than half via smartphones.
Advertisers are beginning to line up, and an app launch is a few months away. India is attracting foreign news organizations as well.
T h i s mo n t h , Scroll.in, in partnership with Quartz, the two-year-old online business news property owned by the Atlantic Media Company, is starting Quartz India, Quartz’s first country-specific site. BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post plan to open offices in India this year. And The Guardian is studying the potential of a country-focused site, according to a person at the news organization with knowledge of the plans . The Guardian Media Group’s chief executive said in a recent interview with The Independent that India has “huge potential.” More than 130 million Indians are online every day, mostly on their phones .
The newcomers’ approaches underscore changes that have spread across the industry . For example, the Indian sites of Quartz, BuzzFeed and Huffington Post will rely on local journalists, rather than foreign correspondents.
“It’s not about creating Huffington Post in India — but rather creating an Indian Huffington Post,” said Koda Wang, general manager of Huffington Post’s international division. BuzzFeed and Huffington Post already run a few country- specific sites . BuzzFeed plans to expand into Germany, Mexico and Japan, and it introduced its Australia page in January. Huffington Post will open a Greece-specific site and an Arabic language edition this year . Thirty percent of Buzz- Feed’s readership is outside of the United States, compared with 40 percent of Quartz’s and Huffington Post’s.
Business Insider, which opened an India site last September, teamed up with the country’s biggest media conglomerate, The Times of India.
In its partnership with Quartz, which Mr. Patil characterized as a “soft association,” Scroll.in will share some of its writers. By soft association, Mr. Patil meant that Scroll.in was not being acquired by or sharing equity with Quartz, but they would have a complementary style, content and social media strategy. Nikhil Pahwa, founder of Medianama. com, a website that analyzes digital media , said, “India is a market that delivers very high consumption and usage, but struggles when it comes to being commercially viable.”
Huffington Post and Quartz India point toward native advertising as perhaps the most practical way of making money . Native advertising, which is sponsored content made to look like an article, could be attractive to Indian readers who are used to having to click through ad s to reach articles .
“What we’re doing now,” Mr. Patil said, “is building a quality audience, for ourselves and for advertisers. And better still, we’re training the next generation of journalists in the meantime.”
中譯
報紙在印度隨處可見。在城市的小茶館，吃早餐的人們一邊啜茶一邊看報，將當日報紙攤在充當桌布的舊報紙上，然後伸手去拿裝在克難型外帶包裝袋裡的菜餃。包裝袋則是把報紙摺起來再用訂書機訂成的。
不過，在印度典型的社會階級現代化過程中，數位媒體也同步突飛猛進。
帕提爾把最近十年的大部分時間花在讓印刷媒體成功轉型為數位媒體。七年前，他買下印度最有名的漫畫出版社。當時出版社銷量滑落，他把漫畫社作品拍成動畫，在印度的卡通頻道和迪士尼頻道播出。帕提爾最新的新創公司Scroll.in趕上了印度網路新聞媒體的新興熱潮。
Scroll.in提供印度政治與文化的分析與報導，以卷軸格式呈現。元月啟動後的三個月，已有一百萬名不重複的訪客造訪該網站，超過半數透過智慧手機瀏覽。廣告主開始趨之若鶩，網站幾個月後將推出應用程式。
同時，印度也招攬國外新聞機構。
這個月，Scroll.in與大西洋媒體公司旗下成立兩年的商業新聞網站的「石英」，將合夥推出印度版的「石英」，將是「石英」第一個專門針對特定國家的網站。BuzzFeed和「哈芬頓郵報」（新聞網站）計畫今年在印度設立辦事處。
英國「衛報」內部知情人士透露，衛報正在研究設立以國家為焦點網站的可行性。衛報集團執行長最近接受「獨立報」訪問時表示，印度有「極大潛力」。
每天上網的印度人超過一億三千萬，大多以手機上網。
後浪的做法凸顯出遍布新聞產業的轉變。例如，「石英」、BuzzFeed 和哈芬頓郵報的印度網站將仰賴當地的記者，而非外國的特派記者。
哈芬頓郵報國際部總經理王幸田說：「我們不是在印度辦哈芬頓郵報，而是創辦印度版的哈芬頓郵報。」
BuzzFeed與哈芬頓郵報已設有一些針對特定國家的網站。BuzzFeed 計畫將版圖拓展到德國、墨西哥和日本，元月已設立澳洲網站。哈芬頓郵報今年將建置專為希臘開設以及阿拉伯文的網站。BuzzFeed的讀者有三成在美國境外，石英和哈芬頓郵報境外讀者則占四成。
新聞網站「商業內幕」去年九月成立印度文的網站，並和印度最大的媒體集團「印度時報」結盟。帕提爾用「柔性結盟」形容與「石英」的合作關係，表示Scroll.in將提供部分作者供對方使用。帕提爾所謂的「柔性結盟」，指的是Scroll.in並未被「石英」收購或者共有股權，而是在風格、內容和社群媒體的策略上互補。
分析數位媒體的網站Medianama.com創辦人帕瓦說：「印度是消費和使用量很大的市場，但是要獲利卻不容易。」
哈芬頓郵報和石英的印度版往原生廣告發展，認為可能是最實際的賺錢方式。「原生廣告」讀起來像報導，內容卻接受廣告商贊助，或許可以吸引習於必須點選廣告才能閱讀文章的印度讀者。
「我們正在做的，」帕提爾說，「是為我們自己和廣告主打造優質的觀眾。更棒的是，我們同時還訓練新一代的記者。」
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