Business Models and Strategies: a Case Study of Free Daily News Papers

A newspaper plays an important role in disseminating current information and events and keeps its readers up-to-date. The electronic newspaper or e- newspaper is a self-contained, reusable and refreshable version of a traditional newspaper that acquires and holds information electronically. Moreover, electronic newspapers retrieve information electronically from online databases, process it electronically with word processors, desktop publishing packages and a variety of more technical hardware and software, and transmit it electronically to the end-users. Broadly speaking, e-news items which evolve from 'online newspaper', 'PDF newspaper', and 'e-news via e-devices' may not be taken synonymously since they are different from each other in terms of developments and use. The arrival of internet lias brought promising avenues for the information sector. Newspaper publishing is one of the sectors that has seen a notable transformation after the development of the internet. Media companies including newspapers have taken the advantage of internet technology which has converged all forms of mediated communication including audio, video, data, text, still photo and graphic art to reach audiences1. Online newspapers have helped in the development of more open and creative platform for sharing information more quickly across globe. They have helped to bring the people together in a more dynamic and interactive space. There are approximately 4.900 online newspapers available throughout the world2. Paperboy (2012) alone lists 6.170 online newspapers which clearly reflects a growing trend in the online newspaper domain (as of September 08. 2012). Evolution of newspaper began 111 the 15tli century from Corantos- papers printed in Northern Germany. Thereafter newspapers were published from various parts of the world, hi India, the fust newspaper came from Bengal with the publication of Hickey's Bengal Gazette by James Augustus Hickey 011 29 January 1780. The culture of newspaper reading did not exist in J&K as the majority could neither read nor write during the major portion of the 18th century and well up to the middle of the 19tli century. The print journalism in J&K state marked its appearance with the publication of an Urdu periodical named "Budiablas" by an autocratic ruler Maharaja Ranbir Singh. The origin and evolution of press in J&K provides one of the most insightful windows into the social, religious, political and economic progress of the state. After the debut of the newspapers in Kashmir, their growth as important information sources continued. The technological reconfiguration in the Web era has changed the looks of information sources in general and newspapers in particular. First online newspapers, then newspapers with social media inclusion, newspapers have travelled a long way. All over the globe, online newspapers are testing new waters of the ever growing and dynamic social media technologies. Online newspapers in Kashmir are also introducing social media technologies. Plans of action are the bases whereupon firms behavior business. They are made and saw by venturing back from the business movement itself to take a gander at its bases and the underlying aspects that make directing trade with the item or administration conceivable. A plan of action includes the origination of how the business works, its underlying establishments, furthermore the trade exercises and money related streams whereupon it could be great. Plans of action can likewise be portrayed as the structural planning for item, administration, and data streams, including a portrayal of different business exercises and their parts. They incorporate a portrayal of the potential profits for the different business performers and the wellsprings of incomes. Regarding up to date communications, plans of action requirement to record for the fundamental assets of processing and circulation advances, content creation or procurement, and in addition recuperation of expenses for making, gathering, and introducing the substance. Comprehending the plan of action under which a firm works or will work is particularly critical when new items or administrations are produced or the industry is in a state of huge change. In these circumstances the elements that help a plan of action change all the while. Thus, plans of action that might once have been fruitful may get less fruitful and be deserted. Plans of action that appear suitable for new items or administrations may not prepare the help and structures essential as the business milieu changes what's more may then be modified or relinquished in favor of different models.

services have been comprehended in order to assess the important trends of e-news industry and the mode of e-news services offered at different parts of the world. The authors too have given some impetus to this burning topic through the exercise of their personal experiences and knowledge. A list of 58 daily newspapers of Kashmir obtained from CNS Directory (Appendix I) were surveyed. Out of 58 newspapers only 21 (36.20%) were found online. Among the 21 online newspapers. 10 (47.61%) were in English language: 10 (47.61%) in Urdu and 1(4.76%) newspaper was in Kashmiri. The ten English online dailies include Greater Kashmir, Kashmir Dispatch, Kashmir Horizon, Kashmir Images, Kashmir Monitor, Kashmir Observer, Kashmir Times, Rising Kashmir, The Mirror of Kashmir and Trade and Jobs and eleven vernacular dailies include Aft ah, Etalaat, Gadyal, Kashmir Uzma, Kashur Akhbar, Khidmat, Roshni, Srinagar Times, Mashriq-e-Kashmir, Uqab and Wadi hi Awaz. Each newspaper was manually checked on its respective website to find out the adoption of the selected social media tools on their sites. Various statistical tests were carried out using Minitab statistical software package. The study is confined to the adoption of five social media tools. Facebook. Twitter. Reddit. Digg and Linkedln. by the online newspapers of Kashmir.

Business models are formulae through which costs and revenues are defined. These constitute the criteria that managers use to set priorities or to decide what possible innovations are attractive or unattractive. Models are vital tools representing the essential characteristics of reality as well as imaginary ideals, thereby playing an important role in decision making. They are the way we conceptualise the world by focusing on the most important parts and reduce less significant information so we can establish meaningful patterns. While this function of models is true generally, what is often ignored is the relationship between the starting point and development of specific models and the underlying assumptions and context that guide their creation. It is this relationship that determines the legitimacy and impact of models. A portion of the exploratory studies led on the reasonability of electronic newspapers by the exploration researchers from distinctive parts of the world are commendable of examination. In the previously stated bearing. Bains in his paper highlighted the advancement of electronic news generation and anticipated that electronic news could reinstate ink on paper, yet just when something superior to a PC screen comes into broad utilization. Dimmick et al in their study found that the Internet has their paper displayed what's to come situation of utilization and configuration of the e-newspaper. They tended to a few issues like route, pagination, structure and outline of e-newspapers. Yijun and Liwen6 concentrated on the web perceivability of national newspapers from (USA Today), Canada (The Globe and Mail), China (Individuals' Daily) and Hong Kong (Sing Tao Every day) through connection investigation and found that The Globe also Mail appeared to have a bigger global compass than USA Today. Not, one or the other newspaper website pulled in joins from China or from pages in the Chinese dialect. Outside China, People's Daily, an official Chinese Government newspaper, is not as unmistakable as Hong Kong based Sing Tao Daily. USA Today and The Globe and Mail were utilized more for news refering to then again republishing purposes while People's Daily appeared to be utilized all the more as an examination asset. It gave an backhanded perspective of the online readership. The paper examined accepted methods for overseeing newspaper assets and the necessity to unit another medium of entering the data substance the asset. The important news things were downloaded and foreign into IFA net database which was made utilizing Microsoft Access.

All electronic newspapers have launched their respective websites for the access to varied contents of news through Internet. A Google search retrieved many news oriented websites. Some of them are listed in Table.

devices such as mobiles phones, net-books, and e-readers, many publishers are seeing the value in producing an e-paper alongside their print editions in order to boost subscriptions and readership and by this way e-newspapers are gradually creeping into the academic scenario where the basic focus is on electronic news delivery by navigational support to task oriented reading however, financial outcome remains one of the major concern for the media houses. Some online newspaper vendors are engaged in generating revenue through advertisements and sponsorships. In this context, it is recommended that sponsorships may be processed differently than other internet ads and perhaps due to their subtle nature, may confuse readers about the sponsor's intent, thus resulting in decreased processing of the sites content and subsequently may affect the memory of the readers.

Though an online newspaper can now be regarded as an institutionalized genre, its association with the printed news genre is still important. Research has demonstrated how the printed and online newspaper genres are interwoven in such a way that they cannot easily be dissolved. In today’s media landscape modern newspapers cannot cope without an online presence, which allows them to provide news updates, cross-references, and additional services. Even though research shows negative pay-offs associated with seven years of online investments, the financially constrained newspapers have no plans to withdraw their online presence. This confirms the importance for firms of relying on a meta business model as base to develop specific business models relevant to the changing environment. A Scandinavian study1 suggests a number of institutional factors, which are involved in the shaping online news into a distinct genre. The emergence of new communicative practices in response to the mutual shaping of the news genre and the new media has been outlined. The emergence of sequential dependencies between online and printed news, suggesting a type of genre interdependency, has also been demonstrated. The adoption of new media is therefore transforming the nature of newspaper organisations’ business. The ongoing diffusion of personal computers,and mobile telephones, as well as the advent of new technologies such as the e-paper, induce genre changes that are reflected in the way news is produced and consumed. Newspaper organisations need to pay attention to the way new information technologies change the conditions and open opportunities for news production. The most emerging with changes in technology and the audience’s everyday life. Research has reported that audiences view the printed and online genres as complementary and interdependent. Thus, we can say that use patterns and preferences of audiences are clearly changing. The increasing number of news genres and their interdependency will most likely accelerate this change, making news consumption a natural ingredient throughout the day of news consumers. Beyond the personal computer, mobile news genres are already making news always more ubiquitous. Developing audience expectations associated with ubiquitous media might enhance the transformation of newspaper companies into media organisations that provide a range of services not traditionally linked to the news genre. All this has, of course, a direct impact on the type and number of business models adopted by newspaper publishing companies.

An e-news service has offered a handful of opportunities to the users' community of late. It has helped to ensure simultaneous access at infinite points by saving of time and money. A user can go through the e-version of the newspaper, which is the replica of the printed newspaper, by sitting at his/her desktop having internet connectivity at his/her own comfort and convenience. Though people are gradually adopting e-newspapers and e-news services, it has not been able to fulfill some other advantages that they have from printed newspapers. Continuity of the news contents, scrolling of the pages, interruptions in reading, hyper linking, animations and few other issues need to be taken care of by the e-publishers. Contextually, e-news publishers and electronic media houses have to play the most crucial role in exploring the latest information communication technologies with a view to satisfying the needs of e-newspaper readers from all possible angles so that they can really enjoy reading e-newspapers. Moreover, e-news publishers and e-media houses should try to find the ways and means in all possible directions to harness the revelations of information technology for promoting the quality by enriching the scope, contents, coverage, and design of e-newspapers that are the biggest challenges to be resolved in the days ahead.

Publishers ranked the traditional core of newspaper content and business activities (editorial, advertising,

publishing companies as perceived by the respondents. The respondents have identified editorial as well as content generation and content management as the prevailing core competencies of their companies in the field. The Scandinavian publishers, together with the editorial skills, stress the importance of a reliable journalism.

The advent of electronic newspapers has really offered us a great opportunity for making a swift review of things and day today events that are happening all around almost at a wink. Moreover, it has certainly enriched the horizon of newspaper reading by all class of people at a much faster pace which no other medium can address. It is the right time for the information professionals to apprise and sensitize the readers' community the latent advantages of e-newspapers and e-news services and carry out periodic information literacy campaign among the users' community for encouraging, promoting and developing their global news gathering habit pin-pointedly, easily, effectively, and conveniently for creating an enjoyable news gathering experience among the readers of the electronic era. The key challenge before the LIS professionals is to increase the usage of e-newspapers by its intended audience. Though only 21(36.2%) newspapers of Kashmir are available online, most of them have adopted social media technologies to some extent with Greater Kashmir, Rising Kashmir and Kashmir Monitor showing full visibility 011 the selected social media tools. All the three are old and well established newspapers which have added social media to their websites .These newspapers can reach distant Kashmiri readers if social media finds place in these newspapers. Despite the fact that vernacular newspapers seem to be quite at the stages of infancy in implementing these technologies, newspapers of Kashmir have begun to embrace new social media concepts on their sites. Vernacular dailies that can technology-social media, hi order to survive in this ever growing and changing technological world, online newspapers, especially the vernacular ones of Kashmir need to focus 011 the interactive social media concretion in their websites.

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