Krishna Bharat: The future of news is digital

Durgesh Gupta - Televisionpoint.com | Bangalore

Krishna Bharat

From Silicon Plateau to Silicon Valley, it has been a long and interesting journey for this Bangalore boy. As a student, Krishna Bharat would devour three newspapers, every morning with his cup of coffee. Now, the world plugs into Google News, his creation, and pride & joy.

A PhD from Georgia Tech, he founded Google's R&D operations in India and was Bangalore centre's first director till 2006. In a interview from his Mountain View, California office, the principal scientist at Google Inc. talks about the future of news and more.

Ask him how he envisages the nature of news in 2034 and he has a very simple answer to it. He says news will continue to be an important part of our lives and provided by both professionals and enthusiasts.

"The internet is already a powerful medium to disseminate news. Given the pace of technological change, it's rather presumptuous to talk about how it will be 25 years from now. Nevertheless, we can extrapolate from some current trends." Bharat says.

He explains, "The first trend is personalization. The delivery of news will be adapted to the individual and match her lifestyle and taste and enable seamless consumption across multiple devices - laptop, palmtop, mobile phone, etc."

"News will be tailored to your preferences and you will get largely what you want. The 'one shoe fits all' model will give way to highly personalized news," Bharat says adding that the second trend is authorship. Currently, when we read an article, that's the end of the experience; and later news presentation will become more complicated and inter-connected.

The reader will be able to go as deep into the topic as she wants, navigate to related topics and sample a range of opinions. The challenge is to facilitate this process, which will enable better understanding of the content. he says.

The third trend is public access. Right now, professional journalists largely have access to many aspects of news. In the future, the reader will have direct access to government documents, facts and figures and perhaps even interact with people at the heart of the news.

"For media organizations, it will be a challenge to choreograph the news experience for the reader. Print will continue to be popular - it has several advantages of being tactile and portable." Bharat opines.

In the process of evolution, news may be available on some form of e-reader, but with the same feel of print and news will be updated in real time. Eventually, it's not just about the device, but about the news.

Speaking about the delivery mechanisms of the future, Bharat adds that "Right now, news is largely text but over the years, multimedia and video will dominate. At Google, we're looking at more languages and more geographies. The effort is to enable the reader to understand the content and analyze the news so she can make an informed choice."

Google's aggregation of news is becoming increasingly popular. He says that customization will be the key. To use a print analogy, what could be on page 4 for one person could be on page 1 for another, simply because of their preferences.

"In any case, the important news of the day will be common to all. When you are more interested in a particular subject, customization and automation of news selection comes into play. Of course, we should not ignore the need for serendipity and not end up boxing the reader into a cocoon of her preferences." he adds.

But are we running the risk of information overload. Bharat says, "Automation can help reduce it. Even as we group the links to a story and provided the links to someone searching for more, the effort is to avoid duplication of links from the same sources and present fresh perspectives."

"For news organizations, the challenge will be to focus on the best, syndicate the rest. This will enable the reader to sift through information and pick what she wants." he says.

Speaking about the next big challenge of news management, he says, that two aspects - exploration and exploitation are paramount." How do we give what the reader wants but, at the same time, give something else she may like in the future?"

"And, secondly, How do we provide good content which drills deep into the area of interest and makes it a rich experience in terms of related links as well as interactivity with others sharing the same interest?" he asks.

He says, "I listen to the radio often and there's a sense of anticipation of what will come next. News organizations will perhaps focus on how to drum up a reader's interest in new subjects while satisfying expectations on familiar topics."

"The future of news is digital. Provide relevant information, give different viewpoints, enable the reader to understand news better and help her make an informed choice - that's the real challenge of the future." Bharat concludes.