bdnews24: Happy birthday, but are you ready for the next transition?

Happy birthday, bdnews24. Sorry I couldn't attend the party, but I am increasingly less mobile as I am getting older and without transport, socializing always becomes the first casualty in this mad traffic-jammed city. But my heart is with you. Million congratulations and may you flourish for long after 10 years. But may you also look at the challenges that face you as media in Bangladesh itself is undergoing a major transition. For someone who has spent over 4 decades in media, beginning with hot metal to now online, I would say that unless the changes keep up with time and competition, chances are that media outlets will disappear. And it's not technology alone.
In pre-traffic jam Dhaka, people would go and hand over their pieces to the Editor. Today, no one does that unless one wants to chat with friends there. Much news is uploaded and downloaded and read likewise. Media exists more in the digital space than elsewhere.

Take my typical yesterday. I checked exam scripts in the morning and wrote comments on my FB page watching/reading about cricket online. I did click on the TV but amidst all the work, it's online that I was most hooked into.

I then wrote a short piece for a media outlet and sent it by e-mail and they responded accordingly. The cricket match was pure tension breeder and I was connected online to my friends in different parts of the world watching the same match.

Around 5.p.m I was interviewed by an online outfit for their FB live TV. The camera was a fancy digital phone not a camera. As we chatted, updates were arriving via another phone, making the discussion immediate.
In the evening I went to a TV station and shared opinion on the AL Council which most people had viewed on their mobile phone handsets. It's a digital world and maybe not a revolution yet but a takeover if you will of the middle class.

As the interviewer said, "Print media outlets keep the paper for identity and advertisements. But it's read online. It's much less expensive too." If print is not over yet, it's certainly not up and running.

bdnews24 is a digital media with a massive footprint and, as it says, the first internet newspaper in Bangladesh. It happened a decade back but is now firmly on its way forward, but it also faces challenges. There are several challenges, but the area I want to focus on are the opportunities that digital media offers and if they being taken advantage of, or can be.

By its very nature, digital media is regional and global but most Bangladeshi outlets seem to think of it in "national" terms. That attitude is self-defeating in a globalized world. This means that the English version of the product can be read across borders. Like everyone else, bdnews24 can do much better.

We often bemoan the fact that international media keeps influencing national public opinion on many issues including the very sensitive War Crimes Trial, but what do we offer to the world as a counter and competition? Is the rigid linguistic jingoism or inability to expand beyond the borders sensible in a world where such boundaries have been erased, and the English language is making that possible?

Unfortunately, English versions – and now all the Bangla media outlets have English versions -are not necessarily English. The English-able journalists are very limited in number and many now basically translate their thoughts from Bangla to English, making it a strange media language. It doesn't work.

So we are stuck with a necessary objective – reach beyond our borders – and a serious obstacle – not having the human resources for the job.

As South Asian media expands, the heat will be felt more. As our economy expands, it will be needed more. As our need to be heard more expands, the demand will be more but will we have the supply?

This challenge is the next one which bdnews24 inevitably faces, which is to go regional and occasionally global, but for that it needs to take a few steps. One is to invest in developing human resources able to respond to regional issues, go regional with useful and relevant media products and serve them all in a vernacular common to the region.

It's the logical next step for bdnews24, and hopefully it will find that challenge as stimulating as it found taking the first step to becoming the first internet newspaper in Bangladesh.

Best wishes!