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Jun292008
Mutiny Going Print
When Mutiny was launched four years ago, never in my wildest dreams had I imagined it would become this popular. Today it is India’s leading blog on current affairs with over 50 contributors spread across the country.
So who reads all this stuff?
Eighty five percent of Mutiny readers are from India. We are not a non resident ‘desi’ website. Our contributors write about matters that affect them. In a way we are what tehelka coined “public interest journalism”. I have often wondered why people read the Mutiny? We are not a news organization, we mostly deal with “secondary data” from the main stream media. So why is there a interest in what Mutiny publishes?
The answer might lie in the fact that we are a collection of different voices. Mutiny by itself is just a platform. During the past four years our only bias has been that we are nationalists. We have never pushed an agenda or become a mouth piece for an organization.
If you are a regular reader of the Mutiny, you might have noticed that we have been often accused by the Right as being Left and by the Left as being Right wing. I see no greater vindication of our our neutrality from these allegations.
Technology has enabled us to pool in resources virtually and make something big. A few years ago it would have been unimaginable to think of creating something like the Mutiny. The same technology backed motivation today brings us to the door of another great opportunity. Mutiny is going print.
Why?
We want to be accessible to more people. We want to print views expressed here and make it available for more sections of our society. We are the very last stages of making this a reality. I don’t think that there has been a similar case anywhere in the world where a blog has evolved into a print magazine.
As we are about to take this step, I want to invite all of you to share your ideas on making this model work. Is there a way any of you can contribute. Do you know of people who might want to advertise? What is the best price for subscription? Should we go weekly soon? What is best way for distribution? Should we give free distribution to educational institutions?
I look forward to hearing from you.
The views expressed in this post are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by Mutiny.in
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Cuckoo
001
9:39 pm
Yayyy !! Congratulations once again !
we are a collection of different voices…So true !!
Not only accused of being left or right, some people have even expressed to me their views about the name “Mutiny”.
But I am happy, let us stand & build together a strong and better India.
Nikhil Narayanan
002
10:34 pm
This is a bold move.But, even the optimist is me is slightly skeptical.
I am not sure if this will work.
Are you trying to target a non-internet savvy crowd with this move?
For all Indians abroad, I feel online edition is what suits best.
Remember, The Hindu newspaper had this International Edition that they used to send abroad(weekly).Not quite sure how successful it was and if it still exists.
If the target is India, I am not clear who are the audience.
HP
003
10:47 pm
Best of Luck for your initiative!
manuscrypts
004
10:14 am
its totally different waters… you need to know exactly who you are pitching it to - geographically, demographically and so on… but all the best, nevertheless
Naresh Kodithala
005
10:41 am
Hey… This is a very good move. Mutiny is about issues concerning the whole of India, and it is totally unbiased and has no inclinations towards anything whatsoever. It should be definitely made available to a larger strata of the society who are much more impacted by most of the issues we read here.
Vishal harma
006
1:13 pm
Jacob - this is not a right move - may be u should consider ur move again. May be you should look at Nitin pai’ online megazine.
Think about delivering it on other e-format instead of print.
ramanathan
007
5:35 pm
i guess mutiny’s impact is so much because it is online. morover, print is an entirely differnt thing. it is more work, more investment, if you want a good product that is.
i am not exactly sure what kind of ‘larger audience’ u are looking at. if the audience u want reach out thro print is an average indian audience, then things need to be presented in a different manner, not like here in mutiny.in . the average indian audience is very unintelligent. and if u are reaching to a larger intelligent audience, then online is a better medium.
i think there is still an online audience which is not very familiar with mutiny. why not concentrate more on that? why not make more impact on our online readers? are we at a level that we cannot do anything more online?
i read in one of your posts where u wanted to make mutiny the print tv radio and online media of the country… i guess it should be done slow. may be a bit too early for that!
maybe it wud help if u can tell us more about the plan.
however, all the best if you are going ahead with it! looking forward to having a look at it!
1conoclast
008
6:05 pm
Chacko,
It isn’t about whether the print edition will make it or not.
For me, it is about spreading the Mutiny’s message beyond the internet!
I would seriously recommend (just an example) a Marathi version of the paper to give people something to read besides saamna!
sanjukta
009
6:17 pm
To the cynical ones,
As Chacko puts it, Mutiny will remain what it is today, the print version is only going to be an extension, not a replacement of this blog.
@Ramanathan
the average indian audience is very unintelligent.
Whoa that’s like the heights of assumption, snobbishness and arrogance. Wonder what gives you the right or authority to underestimate the intellectual capacity of millions.
I am all eyes and ears and just cant wait to see how the average Indian news monger for who one political news mag a month is a part of the staple diet, reacts to the print Mutiny.
Chacko, one thing we’d miss in the print though, the anacondaish comment threads. Any way to publish some of these comments too?
1conoclast
010
7:02 pm
sanju,
I kinda agree with Ramanathan. One look at some of the comments in the forums on the Mutiny will tell you as much, right?
And I think we can let people write in the way other newspapers do. Dear Ed etc. And we can publish a selection of the comments. Will allow us to filter propaganda. Or showcase it.
xylene
011
11:13 pm
If we indeed going to go for the print version, I think it shud be somethiing like The Economist model. (am i asking tooo much???) I enjoy reading it because it has more of opinions than news. Coz by the time the magazine reach me I know the news, so I am only looking forward for the opinions.
Angry Indian
012
11:02 am
Heartiest congratulations Chacko, I do have some suggestions, will leave a reply at your contact us section.
http://www.angryindian.com
Jo
013
2:15 pm
Mutiny print version is just an offline extension of what we see here online. Mutiny.in is not going to shut down. It will still be on as Chacko had explained.
Vishal,
I think another e-print format is not worth it. What Nitin has done with Pragati is not a good example IMHO. Pragati’s audience is mostly the e-readers, those who follow INI and INI authors’ (or friends of INI) blogs. So it is just the same e-audience reading a ‘differently packaged’ content. What Mutiny print trying to achieve is to target a different audience who suf the news stands. Mutiny’s authors are also people who have different ideologies and opinions. This, I believe is a strength.
We don’t know if it is going to be a huge success yet. The concept is still a baby but we have high hopes about it. Imagine a regular news stand surfer see the Mutiny mag and buys it and goes through it. Different from the regular news mags, Mutiny does not deliver news, but individual opinions about news and other things which would definitely attract the newspaper reading crowd.
Now to make sure of the reach to the targeted audience etc is a marketing thing, which can be eventually achieved.
Ramji
014
10:44 pm
This is a really interesting idea but I’m skeptical about it too. One of the features that has made Mutiny so popular is the comments section and the honest & direct ‘word-wars’ which happen in the comments section. Taking this off, takes the sheen off Mutiny a little bit. What I would suggest is this:
1. A bi-monthly or weekly print edition.
2. Magazine like interface with/without ads.
3. It must list the most popular posts of the week along with some of the most useful comments on it as well.
4. The frequency of distribution must not be less than a bi-monthly edition. This is because most of the topics we discuss on here are current affairs and they tend to get sour in the people’s mindspace in a short span of time.
5. It must initially be targeted towards a particular audience either in terms of region such as Delhi/Mumbai or in terms of age-group such as students. The feedback from this ‘experiment’ should drive the successive modifications and distribution methods of the Mutiny Magazine.
6. If Mutiny enters the print domain, there can no longer be anonymity with regards the authors. They’ll be forced to acknowledge and be accountable for their posts. With the reach of a larger audience Mutiny might become a target for political parties and jobless individuals to file unnecessary defamation lawsuits and the like. The implication of this on both the Mutiny Mag as well as the authors themselves must be given a very thorough consideration.