7th Anniversary

বিডিনিউজ টোয়েন্টিফোর ডটকম
Published : 23 Oct 2013, 12:00 PM
Updated : 9 Jan 2014, 12:35 PM

 7 years on…

Toufique Imrose Khalidi

Editor-in-Chief

When in October 2006 we decided to open our content to public free of cost, creating the First Internet Newspaper in Bangladesh, in fact one of the first in the world, many of my friends and colleagues thought this was a crazy idea. Shifting the focus from news agency service to being an online news portal! I am sure you understand the difference between the online version of newspaper content or TV content and an Internet-only newsgathering operation. There was a huge cost involved for the Bangladesh’s first 24/7 news provider in any medium, with no guaranteed or tested sources of revenue.

That there was no business model to follow turned out to be the biggest challenge.

It was much easier for us to change the face of journalism for which academics often shower praises on us, or challenge the decadent news reporting culture that helped dubious sources use and abuse the power of the media in Bangladesh. The worst and the most frequent abuse took place in 2007 and 2008 when all major news outlets gave in to the pressure, many of them voluntarily.

Convincing the corporate world was indeed proving mighty difficult.

But one big corporate entity surprised me. Only weeks into our launch as a free-to-access news portal, GrameenPhone chose us as the exclusive partner for its branded news service. Some of the news outlets were at least older than us, their names much better known. Two young executives who came to see me gave me a fantastic piece of news: bdnews24.com was not just the fastest but also the most accurate news provider, according to an in-house survey they had conducted over the previous two weeks. Voice news service on mobile phones had already been there. But when we launched, the service was hitting big numbers for the first time. And then the 160-character SMS news service was born; hundreds of thousand started getting ‘breakfast updates’ on their mobile phones. Our highly-popular news alert service, which we branded as BREAKING NEWS, was launched immediately thereafter. Both were firsts in        Bangladesh.

Until the Manila-based Asian Centre for Journalism invited me in July 2008, I did not realise that we had created a new business model for a new kind of newsgathering outfit. I was told that our numbers were much bigger than inquirer.net, then quite a phenomenon in the Philippines. Queries from top journalism professors from all over the world fascinated me. And they went beyond the business model. ‘What are the new things that should be added to the MA in Journalism course for mid-career professionals? ’

Before we began, I had been following the growth of the mobile phone industry, in Bangladesh and elsewhere. These companies did in months what the state-run phone outfit couldn’t in decades. In just years, they were everywhere in Bangladesh. It was inevitable that growth of internet would follow. Today, according to regulators BTRC, the total number of internet connections in Bangladesh stands at well over 36 million, 10 times the population of Norway or New Zealand. Nearly 95 percent of this number comes from the mobile phone operators.

Now let me get to the point I really wanted to make today.    I believe our main challenge at the moment is quality of our education. There are plenty of people with fantastic CVs, high-sounding degrees, but unfortunately with very little substance in most cases. In my opinion, our schools suffered the decline the most. The widening gap between the very best and the average primary or secondary or higher secondary schools has been a cause for serious concern. And we cannot simply create the 100,000 or so English language or mathematics teachers that we need for our primary or secondary schools. But I am sure you’ll all agree that we have at least five top quality teachers. Indeed, we have world class teachers in some of our schools. Internet can help us convert these five or even one into one hundred thousand. I know I need not explain how to an audience so enlightened and knowledgeable. Please don’t listen to skeptics.

And I repeat what I keep saying all the time, risking                unpopularity among certain groups of people: There is a social and cultural necessity for us all to behave responsibly when we deal with any form of content, news or non-news. We are taking it to a staggering number. They deserve to be treated