Daijiworld News Network – Mangalore (VM)

Mangalore, Mar 14: Journalist D Ram Raj in his comments on web and online journalism stated that the concept of this form of media has not well developed in India or abroad.

Delivering a lecture on 'Web and Online Journalism' organised by the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism in Mangalore University here recently, he said that online journalism started in 1999 but could not sustain unlike TV, radio or print. There were two dotcoms launched in India- Info.com and Cricket.com.

Cricket.com ran without a journalist for over a year in a bid to re-define and re-package its contents. This was intended to give a visual-friendly format to the website.

Then everybody rushed to the website to catch the latest score. By June 2000, plenty of dotcoms were relaunched by young people between 30 and 35 years old, recruiting 30 per cent of journalists all over India.

But when New York stocks fell, dotcoms too were affected, he said. Info.com is the only surviving website and then India Abroad News Service (IANS) began catering to the taste of Indians in US.