Of late I am debating on cutting down on the newspaper expense. No, recession hasn’t cut into my household budget. Well, not yet at least. Simply that the amount of newspapers and business magazines that are available online at no price whatsoever is prompting me to take the decision. Everything from the ultra conservative and hushed-up Hindu to the glad-rag Times of India is available online. All it needs is just a click and a few moments of browsing to get hooked to the mind-boggling amount of online content. Even better, most of the newspapers have the e-edition of their daily editions online the same day. And you also get the e-editions of some magazines online. All for free.
Significant international business magazines including wall street journal, economist, businessweek, forbes and fortune are online with a treasure trove of their business analysis and latest in the business. What’s more, some of these websites have their content custom-made for the Indian region, which means you get to read the perspectives of famous market analysts and gurus on Indian market.
That apart, the prominent business dailies of India, economic times, businessline and mint are open for free-viewing. Financial times has a dedicated Asia Pacific page with news and analysis on markets. All these are excluding the countless websites owned by the television channels in India, prominent of them being NDTV and CNN-IBN. And the websites of news agencies namely PTI and Reuters.
How can the newspapers afford to put up almost all their content online for free viewing even when the online advertisement revenue is measly in these testing times of recession? I guess the Indian newspapers are banking on the plain fact that not many people in India have access to the internet. That makes sense.
So there it goes. I am going to splurge and make the most out of the free online newspapers much to the chagrin of our corner-street shop newspaper wallah. And you can’t find me dead, my head buried in a newspaper, literally!
