Mohammad Amin Tibet Baqual doesn’t miss the rustle of a newspaper. The retired deputy secretary of the legislative council of Jammu and Kashmir no longer reads the morning dailies to get to know what’s happening around him.
Instead, the 70-year-old resident of Srinagar’s Buchpore uses his mobile phone for news updates. “My daily dose of news and analyses comes from my smartphone now because it’s handy and convenient,” he says.
With many like Baqual forsaking newspapers, it’s not surprising that the state’s many prominent news agencies — sellers of newspapers and magazines — are complaining about a rapid decline in their business. The internet and smartphones have entered every home, and adversely affected the sale of newspapers and magazines, they say.
About six years ago, Khan News Agency, a popular outlet in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk area, would get an average of 6,000 copies of national newspapers and local dailies, apart from magazines, every day. Hundreds of copies were picked up by newspaper hawkers for home deliveries, and the rest were sold at the agency stall, says its owner, Hilal Ahmad.
“Now I get 1,500 print copies of dailies and magazines, and even those I find difficult to sell,” Ahmad rues. Till just a few years ago, he got 300 copies of a national newspaper. “Now I hardly get 20 copies a day and struggle to sell them,” he says.
Ahmad blames high-speed internet services and attractive data packs offered by major telecom companies for the fall. If the trend continues, people whose livelihood depends on selling print copies of newspapers and magazines will be forced to look for other ways to make a living, he says, adding that he has started selling guides and academic books used for the civil services examinations.
Almost all major distributors of newspapers and magazines complain about the declining demand. Ghulam Mohiuddin Kaloo, the owner of Janta News Agency, the largest news agency and distributor of dailies and journals in the Valley, says his business has gone down by 40-50 per cent in the last five years.
Clearly, the easy availability of smartphones and internet penetration in the Valley have, as elsewhere in the country, prompted people to look for news on their mobile devices. Mobile phone services were introduced in the Valley only in August 2003 —well after the rest of the country — and the smartphone market in the region is now worth about ₹40 crore, media reports say.
Ghulam Hassan, a retired banker who lives on the outskirts of Srinagar, is happy with the news he gets on social media sites. “One doesn’t get the urge to read the morning newspapers anymore,” he says. “Short news videos of events and incidents posted on social media make the online medium irresistible. The online platform is empowering as the news is just a click away.”
The readership of local newspapers has declined, too. The news agency owners say the spread of smartphones has also significantly affected the readership of Kashmir’s many newspapers. The young, in particular, prefer to consume local news online on their smartphones, they say.
The trend worries Ashok Raina, owner of Raina News Agency, the oldest outlet in the Jammu region. “There is some interest in reading newspapers and magazines in print among the elder population, but not among the young and the middle-aged,” he says.
Raina says his dealership has in the last four years or so seen a 50 per cent decline in the sale of newspapers and magazines. “This industry is going to shut down if the declining trend continues over the next three or four years,” he holds.
Some believe that unrest in the Valley has contributed to the situation. Every time there is a spell of trouble, there is a disruption in the services, points out Hilal Ahmad Misger, the manager of Abdullah News Agency, another major news agency in Lal Chowk, Srinagar. And once the numbers of copies fall, they seldom go up again, he says. Misger claims the decline began after the 2008 Amarnath land row agitation, sparked by the state and Central governments’ decision to transfer forest land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, and it hasn’t recovered in the years since.
In the months of unrest after Hizbul commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani was shot dead by security forces in 2016, there was a steep fall in the number of copies sold in the Valley, says Misger. “In the 2016 uprising, we didn’t even get to sell any national daily for about three to four months,” he says. “That day is not far when no one is going to walk up to a news agency stall like ours to buy a newspaper copy,” he adds.
College student Sheikh Saqib can’t understand what the fuss is all about. He is happy with free content and the variety of news sources available online. When he was younger, his parents urged him to read the newspapers to improve his language and awareness. “But these days there is not much that would encourage young readers like us to buy and read print copies,” he says.
And that’s not surprising, for this is the age of instant news, points out senior journalist and political analyst Gowhar Geelani. What one reads in the morning paper is now available a day earlier on social media platforms.
“Even what is printed in a newspaper is available on its e-paper or online edition,” he says. “This has changed my media habits at the cost of my romantic affair with the printed word on the broadsheet,” he says, pointing out that media groups, too, are focusing more on digital content.
Baqual has the last word. “We still get a newspaper but that’s for a completely different purpose — it’s for looking up obituaries,” he says.
Majid Maqbool is a journalist and editor based in Srinagar