By Arijit Sen and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The rapid growth in especially mobile internet use in India in recent years has been accompanied by a boom in new digital journalism start-ups. With sites like the Quint, Scroll, the Wire and many others across the country, there are more new and interesting experiments in Indian digital journalism than in most other countries in the world. All of these sites are developing new forms of content aimed at setting them apart from older media, and all of them are developing a mobile-first, social-first distribution strategy fit for the internet of 2016. They seem well poised to benefit from what many digital entrepreneurs see as the biggest market opportunity outside China since the internet took off in the United States in the 1990s. The most successful of these start-ups have built significant audiences very rapidly, published important stories, and made substantial investments in their editorial teams. These are exciting times for digital journalism in India, and we review the content, distribution, and funding strategies of some of the most interesting experiments in a new report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. But will the boom be accompanied by a bust? Funding digital journalism has been very difficult in every other country across the world, and like their peers elsewhere, digital journalism start-ups in India risk being squeezed between large legacy media and even larger international players in the competition for attention and advertising. The opportunity ahead is enormous, and some…
