While joining Yahoo, he talked on his blog about changing Yahoo from being purely a news aggregation service to producing original content. In this post, he talks about coming to the sobering realization that readers don't care about the source of the content and the consequent postponement of his dream, albeit temporarily, of assembling a crack team that would produce original content. That sent out a groan of disappointment from the many who yearn for original content from India.
In the same post, he announced that he had enlisted my favorite blogger from India - Amit Varma to create the Yahoo Opinions section and enlisted some of the top bloggers in the country to contribute original content.
Last week, Prem announced the launch of the official Yahoo editorial blog - Fit to Post. The blog's contributors are members of the Yahoo India editorial staff. Prem describes how the blog benefits the contributors in his inimitable eloquent style -
"It allows my colleagues in Yahoo, who thus far have been voiceless entities spending their days and nights curating content that comes from a multiplicity of sources, to spread their wings; to write and, through writing, to move beyond their daily brief and explore their own limits."
Prem features on the blog too and here's his latest.
Over the years, many of us, living in and outside India, have been helplessly watching the decline of journalism in India across all forms of media. With some notable exceptions like Tehelka and Outlook, the coverage of events and the editorial content emanating from India is indolent and a crass distortion of the truth to make the "news" sensationalistic and simplistic. Its completely devoid of original content. That is why a collective cheer went up when Prem announced these seemingly small but effective initiatives for us to feast on quality writing from some of the top writers in the country.
At Rediff.com, while he was not responsible for the content on the portal, because people related talked about Prem and Rediff.com in the same breath, it was inevitable to associate him with the crap that passed for journalism. Frankly, the best content on Rediff.com are the comments by the readers. They constitute the Humor section of the portal. Prem seems to have found an outlet to spread his wings and pursue his dream of creating original content. Rediff's loss is Yahoo's gain. And ours.
