L Adimoolam elected as new president of Indian Newspaper Society

L Adimoolam of the publication 'Health and The Antiseptic' was on Friday elected as the president of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS), the apex body of publishers of newspapers, magazines and periodicals.

Adimoolam will succeed Shailesh Gupta of Mid-Day.

In the 81st Annual General Body Meeting of the INS, D D Purkayastha of the Ananda Bazar Patrika was chosen as the Deputy President, Mohit Jain of The Economic Times as the Vice President and Rakesh Sharma of Aaj Samaj was elected as the Honorary Treasurer for the year 2020-21. Mary Paul will be the Secretary General.

In his presidential address, outgoing president Gupta said the print media faced "unprecedented challenges" in recent times due to Covid-19 though the earlier part of the year showed signs of economic revival.

The Covid-19 lockdown led to a drop in both commercial and government advertising, which has affected the bottom lines of all, and the industry continues to "shrink" with several newspapers "gasping for breath".

"Shrinking readership and advertisement revenues, rising costs and an onslaught of digital and social media have taken a huge toll on its financial health. There is thus an urgent need to reinvent, explore new revenue models, effective cost-cutting measures and above all, improve the contents," he said.

He said the print media needs to emphasise on quality and credible journalism as advertisers have started to prefer their brands to be associated with credible news sources which was a positive trend.

Highlighting the need for the complete withdrawal of 5% customs duty on newsprint, he also said that the industry has managed to impress upon the government to not impose a separate anti-dumping duty on newsprint, which has been advocated by the newsprint manufacturers.

Gupta also found fault with the new Print Media Advertisement Policy, 2020, saying that it was "arbitrary, unjustified and discriminatory and against the interests" of newspapers, especially from the small and medium categories.

With the print media facing competition from the social media giants that defy the conventional definition of media, he said the INS has taken up the issue with Google India and Facebook to enable print media to get a fair share from the tech giants because they are using the content generated by others.