It is difficult to not notice the gloom and doom in Western (read US) print media these days as layoffs and cost cutting take an unprecedented toll on American journalists.But, amid all the gloom and doom, the soon-to-be-ex top editor of The Washington Post, Leonard Downie makes a compelling case as to why even if newspapers are in trouble, journalism isn’t.

Speaking to the Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism Class of 2009 on opening day, Downie had this to say:

So why go into journalism? Because everything is changing rapidly and there are a lot of new opportunities for young journalists in this new multi-media, multi-platform world of news – and new ways for you to produce journalism that matters.
And there is actually a growing audience for that journalism. Even with the proliferation sources of news and quasi-news sources on the Internet and cable television, “More people now consume what old media newsrooms produce, particularly from print (newsrooms), than (ever) before.” Top ten Web news sites consist of news from traditional news media brands like The Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC, CNN and AP. Together, those ten sites account for 29% of all Web traffic. Even as circulation of print newspapers and the audience for broadcast network and local television station news steadily decline, the audiences for their Web sites are continuing to grow, in many cases quite robustly. You can read (or listen to) more of Downie’s talk at

Most Indian media owners–and journalists–are very sanguine about the future of print media in India. And, stories such as this recent one at Salon.com that advised American journalists to look for jobs in India will only fuel this complacency.

It is difficult to be Chicken Little at a time when a new Indian newspaper edition or magazine appears to be launching every other week. But, the smarter media owners–and journalists–ought to take advantage of hindsight and the Western media industry’s trajectory. It might take five or it might take 10 years but, it is clear to me that the days of Indian print newspapers/magazines as the dominant source of news and information in India are numbered, just as it is clear television news isn’t going to play a much larger role at least not the way news is imagined and presented on Indian television channels.

Is the mobile digital device (phone, blackberry) the answer? If India is among the top two fastest-growing mobile phone markets in the world these days (China is the other), wouldn’t it be good for some breakthrough mobile content and content dissemination models to emerge from India as well? Will they?

News that Oswal Retail, a subsidiary of Punjab-based Oswal Group, has decided to shutter its “innerwear” business and close 22 exclusive Straps outlets didn’t quite get the same attention that the breathless coverage India media gives to retail expansion. Indeed, it was just last September that Straps’ Managing Director Adish Oswal was talking about how cities such as “Pune, Kolkata, Amritsar and Rajkot are also picking up fast” for branded lingerie. Much of the bullishness stemmed from a much-cited study by Technopak that estimated an annual market size of Rs3,800 crore, growing at 12% and expected to touch Rs6,700 crore by 2011. The state of affairs in the retail world of lingerie and underwear (must say I don’t quite understand the squeamishness in having to call it innerwear) these days isn’t perhaps as bad as how Hindustan Times columnist Sushmita Bose described it in her June 2007 Girl Talk column:

“I remember the first time I went lingerie shopping in Delhi alone. It was at a shop in the rather sophisticated Khan Market. The man at the counter looked up hopefully: “Yes?” Ten seconds ago, I was in the ‘I don’t give a damn’ mode, but suddenly I felt like a little ant about to be humbled by giant orangutan.

“Uh, I’d like to check out your lingerie section,” I managed to blurt out, shame-faced. “Long-jhoreee? What is that?” he asked me, looking genuinely confused. I staggered out.”

Indeed, as Mint’s weekend magazine Lounge discovered earlier this year, many Indian retailers of branded underwear (Etam, Straps, Seduction) have realized that a potentially large buyer population for women’s lingerie will be men and it is important to make their experience a bit more pleasant, though as the reporter notes, most “men we know would rather be caught stealing food from the refrigerator than be spotted shopping for lingerie for their girlfriends or wives.

But, the failure of Straps should give serious pause to those in India who unhesitatingly buy every consulting report that comes out with bullish numbers and projections-often paid for by an unnamed current or future client in the same sector-about how wonderfully lucrative this world of branded retail is going to be for everyone, be it grocers, electronics retailers, sportswear or apparel.

Perhaps, it is time to look to the land of Victoria’s Secret for some sobering thoughts on how tough the retail business can be. Here is a not entirely comprehensive list of US retail store closures announced in 2008

Ann Taylor closing 117 stores nationwide.

Eddie Bauer to close more stores. Eddie Bauer has already closed 27 shops in the first quarter.

Women’s retailer Cache announced that it is closing 20 to 23 stores this year.

Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, Catherines closing 150 stores nationwide.

Talbots announced that it will be shutting all 78 of its kids and men’s stores. Now the company says it will close another 22 underperforming stores. The 22 stores will be a mix of Talbots women’s and J. Jill, another chain it owns.

Gap Inc. closing 85 stores including some Old Navy and Banana Republic.

Foot Locker to close 140 stores.

Wickes Furniture is going out of business and closing all of its stores.Wickes, a 37-year-old retailer that targets middle-income customers, had filed for bankruptcy protection.

Levitz first announced it was going out of business and closing all 76 of its stores in December. The retailer dates back to 1910.

The owner of Zales and Piercing Pagoda previously said it plans to close 82 stores by July 31. They have announced another 23 underperforming stores to be closed.

Walt Disney Co said it also obtained the right to close about 98 Disney Stores in the U.S.

Home Depot Inc. announced it is shutting 15 stores amid a slumping U.S. economy and housing market.

Macy’s is closing 9 stores.

Movie Gallery is shuttering 160 stores as part of reorganization plan to exit bankruptcy The video rental company plans to close 400 of 3,500 Movie

Gallery and Hollywood Video stores in addition to the 520 locations the video rental chain closed last fall.

Pep Boys shutting 33 stores.

Sprint Nextel will close 125 retail locations.

Ethan Allen Interiors announced plans to close 12 of 300+ stores.

Wilsons the Leather Experts will close 158 stores.

Pacific Sunwear will close its 154 Demo stores after a review of strategic alternatives. Some 74 underperforming Demostores closed last May.

Sharper Image: The company recently filed for bankruptcy protection and announced that 90 of its 184 stores are closing. The retailer will still operate 94 stores to pay off debts, but 90 of these stores have performed poorly and also may close.

Bombay Co unveiled plans to close all 384 U.S stores. The company’s online storefront has discontinued operations.

KB Toys posted a list of 356 stores that it is closing around the United States as part of its bankruptcy reorganization.

Dillard Inc. to close 6 more stores.

It would be easy to blame the near-recession conditions in the U.S. for the spate of closures and point to America’s saturated retail market as the only reason behind the retailing woes. But, retailing has always been all about managing razor-thin margins in most key categories, with the help of fatter margins in, say, apparel. And, those who survive will mostly do so because they have spent as much energy and time on their back-end, supply chain as they did on branding and promotions. Except those with the deepest pockets, such as Reliance Retail, it is perhaps a safe bet that India too will see a spate of closures from the myriad retail “chains” that have come to life in the past 2-3 years, much like CompUSA in America even as branded retailing remains a relatively small segment of overall Indian retailing.

Buyer beware indeed.

A recent vacation at The Barai in Hua Hin and some blissful massages had me thinking about a recent story by Madhurima Nandy that talked of how spas are taking off big time in India, not just in the large metros but, in cities such as Lucknow, Indore, Jammu, Surat and Jalandhar. But, in two years of looking for a relaxing massage in New Delhi, all I have come across are what I would describe, at best, as vigorous rubdowns, be at it VLCC (from a guy who said he used to be the massage guy at The Oberoi before going freelance) or at the Spa Soul at the Galaxy Hotel Shopping and Spa in Gurgaon following an effusive review in the usually reliable Time Out Delhi. A couple of house calls by two highly recommended masseuses didn’t quite do it either. It could just be me but, if you can’t generally go wrong with even a 250 Baht (about Rs 320) an hour massage on any beach in Thailand, let alone the fancy Barai, why is it so hard to find a really relaxing one in the capital of a country where writings on massage have been found in ancient times?

With hundreds of new spas that have been announced in India, not all the massage oil in Kerala seems enough to create a cadre of trained masseuse to solve this problem. Perhaps the next spate of professional diploma courses from the likes of AHA and CareerLauncher will be for candidates to fill these kinds of jobs.

But, I wonder if Indian parents, many of who appear to have gotten over any concerns about some new services careers, such as flight attendants, will take a similar benign approach if their daughter–or son–wants to go off to a massage school. And, you can be sure some Indian politician will soon come up with something as absurd as what the Batu administration in East Java recently did when it issued a rule asking masseuses to wear magnetic locks on their pants in what they claimed was a move to minimize rampant prostitution in the guise of massages. Fortunately that decision had Indonesia’s state minister of women’s empowerment, Meutia Farida Hatta Swasono, dubbing it an insult and harassment of women.

Meanwhile, you only have to look at the classifieds ads in Hindustan Times and Times of India to know those kind of “massages” will always be around in cities such as New Delhi, as they are in any country where prostitution is not legal.

Anyway, do tell me why I am wrong about my belief regarding New Delhi’s rubdowns. And, please, none of those oil “baths” that masquerade as healthy or Ayurvedic massages and have me hanging on to the massage table for dear life, as tense as elevator cable.

Ever been in that interesting situation where you love a company’s ad but don’t quite like its products or services? That is the state of my relationship with Airtel.

I have used Airtel as my mobile phone/blackberry/home wireless DSL service provider for just over two years now, ever since moving back to New Delhi. Since then, I have fallen in love with their ads, especially the ones airing now where a clearly in-love couple, actors Vidya Balan and R Madhavan, have verbal duels in a train from a taxi and in their apartment, the conversation centering around payments that can all be done through the Indian phone company’s mChek mobile payments service. And I think Airtel’s signature jingle, composed by A.R. Rehman, is ubiquitously catchy and they do use it well.

It is also tough to not admire entrepreneur Sunil Mittal’s tremendous achievement: Airtel is not just India’s largest mobile phone company in terms of subscribers but nowin the top five in-country mobile operators in the world.

But, the warm, fuzzy feeling I get toward Airtel on coming across their ad on television evaporates numerous times on any given day. Take Wednesday July 23 for example and the two Airtel SMS I got:

Airtel Jul 23, 2008 3:10:23 PM

Welcome to Airtel UP & Uttrakhand. Enjoy reduced Roaming rates with all incoming & local outgoing calls while roaming at Re1/min & all STD calls at Rs1.50/min.

Airtel Jul 23, 2008 3:18:57 PM

Welcome to Airtel Haryana. Enjoy reduced National Roaming rates with all incoming & local outgoing calls while roaming at Re1/min & all STD calls at Rs1.50/min. For assistance kindly SMS or call 121.

No, I wasn’t making a mad dash from state to state with my friendly Airtel mobile service keeping up with me when these messages showed up on my blackberry. I was simply sitting in my middle-of-New Delhi high-rise office. This isn’t a freak occurrence either, by the way. Several times a week, Airtel decides I am in UP & Uttrakhand even when all I am doing is perhaps motoring around South or Central Delhi.

So, I have to ask myself. Would I trust my payments to a company that constantly misplaces me? And does this mean their billing systems are so messed up that maybe I am being charged for roaming even when I am not?

Meanwhile, unlike the romantic couple in the Airtel ad who, despite seemingly quite well off, still use pre-paid talk time (I didn’t say all the ads made sense, I just said they push my buttons), I am, thanks to a lot of real life roaming though almost never in UP, Uttrakhand or Haryana, what I would venture to guess a pretty valuable customer for Airtel. Between November and June, for instance, my total mobile bill was at least Rs113,459, or on average about Rs14,000 a month. And, that too, not counting any of my personal calls. Guess what the average Airtel consumer spends? For the quarter ended July, Airtel’s so-called ARPU, or average revenue per user, per month, was Rs350!

Ok, I am not expecting red-carpet treatment but, would certainly like a few less dropped calls; a service that isn’t abruptly turned off when I touch some pre-determined monthly limit (doesn’t their computer show how much I pay and how regular my payments have been in the last two years?); and Airtel text messages that don’t transport me across state lines when I am not really on the move.

Stop whining, just switch to, say, Vodafone India, you say?

Only problem is that at a recent lunch in Delhi, Vodafone Group Plc’s outgoing CEO Arun Sarin noted how the average spectrum (the bandwidth that phone companies use to transmit signals) allocated to a company in US was 20 MHz while it was about 6 MHz in India. Stripped of the tech-speak, this means, Sarin explained, that the number of customers per MHz in India is now the highest in the world.

Basically, as he handed off the reins of Vodafone and headed into the Himalayas for some trekking, hopefully minus his cell phone, Sarin was essentially telling me it doesn’t matter how much you spend in India, your general quality of service and dropped calls, and customer service snafus will be about the same as most of India’s “missed call class” as Mint columnist S Mitra Kalita aptly dubbed those growing millions among us who can afford mobile phones but, really can’t afford what the monthly service costs in a recent column.

What is even more daunting is that India remains one of the fastest growing mobile phone markets in the world and the government expects there will be 500 million mobile phone users by 2010 up from about 287 million now and going up by about 8.94 million subscribers in June 2008 alone.

The good news is some extra bandwidth is coming if India’s telecom minister, the DMK’s A. Raja, can figure out the most profitable way he can try and “sell” it. The bad news is that it doesn’t look like customer service is really top of priority as all the phone companies rush to grab new users. Indeed, Indian consumer venting sites, such as Mouthshut.com, list a litany of woes against all the providers. For instance, Airtel gets an average of just two of five stars based on 530 reviews while Vodafone India does no better in 286 reviews.

Part of Airtel’s mission and promise is that it would “deliver what we promise and go out of our way to delight the customer with a little bit more.” Don’t you think it would be great if they actually delight the customer with a little bit less: of dropped calls, weird text messages and better customer service? Of course, a little bit more of those great Airtel ads are always welcome.

What can I say? I guess I am still a sucker for great ads and lousy service.