WSJ to launch its 1st mobile reader in India in 2010

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News and information publishing giant, Dow Jones is betting big on the India growth story and on the Indian media market. It also wants to the make the most of the telecom revolution in India to deliver content to consumers. It expects digital delivery of content through mobile phones to be a prime driver.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Les Hinton, CEO, Dow Jones & Company spoke about the growth potential of the Indian media market and new modes of content delivery.

Here is a verbatim transcript of the exclusive interview with Les Hinton on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: What is your view on the potential of growth that the Indian media market has to offer at this point in time?

A: I have been here for a few days. I have to say that they have always said that India is a land of extremes. I began my visit at the World Association of Newspaper congress in Hyderabad. You could not have had a gathering of more apprehensive people, in particular newspaper people from Europe and the Americas.

And the contrast in the mood in that room with the mood in the Indian business landscape broadly and in particular media is absolutely startling. In the case of newspapers to begin with, the fortunes of newspapers in the 'developed part of the world' are much more tested for a whole variety of reasons.

Meanwhile, in this country, you have got the most vibrant media market with quite enormous potential. From the point of view of newspapers alone where I think it has been said that each year 30 million Indians are becoming literate compared with Britain. That represents about half of Britain's population.

So, alone, the education level, the literacy level and from what I can tell the Indian delighted in arguing over things portends a great future for all kinds of media in this country.

Q: There are now new modes of delivering content. The Indian mobile market is growing at a furious pace. Do you expect mobile to become the primary mode of digital delivery?

A: I think digital delivery is of course the predominate way in which media is going to grow in the future. In this market by all indications at this point the real growth in digital delivery is going to be through mobile. In the new year the Wall Street Journal will in fact be launching its first mobile reader offering in this market, and it will be concentrating on both the ability of the Wall Street Journal to explain and report on global events.

But we will also be deepening our coverage of the Asian, and in particular the Indian market and also deeper information about Indian commerce in particular. So we are launching that in the new year. It will be a paid for service and already in the testing we have done we believe that it has got a great opportunity.

So we have an Indian website as well. Broadband penetration is not so great in this market as it is elsewhere. But we do think that for us and for a lot of media there is going to be a great opportunity in digital growth here and elsewhere in the world also.

Q: You are in India at a time when there is a controversy of a political party paying for editorial coverage in a mainstream newspaper just before an election. What is your own view of 'paid coverage'?

A: I think first of all to answer the first leg of your question, newspapers in my view can't afford not to be independent. It is very tempting in a testing market I can imagine for a newspaper proprietor fielded by providing certain editorial coverage for which he is paid that that is going to give him his bottomline comfort.

But he is betraying his readers and in the long term no newspaper that can do that can survive. That is the most obvious and blatant and misguided thing to do. There are other newspapers and it is not just in this market who are known to favour in their coverage certain of their most supportive advertisers.

Again if a newspaper does that, it is betraying its readers and its underlying reason for existing, which is to be independent and to be trusted by its readers to be giving objective, independent and honest advice and analysis is lost. And there is no other  purpose for a newspaper to exist.

Q: With increasing pressures, are there other streams of revenues that are opening up for media companies other than relying on advertising alone?

A: It's clear in the developed markets for newspapers that relying on the cyclical advertising market is far too dangerous to do. That has dramatically become evident over the past year or so when advertising in America declined 40%+ in the mainstream newspapers and it was absolutely devastating. No one knows when all of it will come back as the recession recovers. But the principle issue is that newspapers have got to work out how they can get newspaper readers to pay to consume the journalism no matter what platform it is on.

Online, as I mentioned before is a quandary. The Wall Street Journal by the way is almost alone in being the exception of charging its customers. But by and large, they don't. Newspapers are going to try to do that.

But meanwhile, there are means of reading newspapers becoming evident. There is on mobile for instance. We have just begun charging in the US to read the Wall Street Journal on mobile. A great new advance, which I think is going to become the killer app as they say in the electronic world over the next year or two over electronic readers.

Amazon has launched the Kindle. The Kindle has done extremely well as a means of reading books. We actually sell The Wall Street Journal on it at USD 15 a month, 30,000 people have subscribed.

Meanwhile, other new competitors are coming along. Sony has got a very good electronic reader on the way, Barnes & Noble the big US bookstore chain has got a new media coming out and there are several others.

It is going to become very competitive. These devices are going to get better and better. They are now in black and white, they will be in colour. You will soon be able to put really good advertising on them. So, you will see what looks like a print ad, you will be able to touch it and it will become a TV commercial. That I think is going to be a very important additional way in which media journalism can be monetised.