Important question given the news of Pune Mirror being sold to a non-media player. Let’s read what Dr Bhaskar Das has to say on the issue in the Feb 16 edition of Das ka Dum. Read on…
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Q. There is news that Pune Mirror has been bought over by an organisation which isn’t into publishing. Would you say non-media players find it tough to run newspapers given that news stories could impact their other interests?
A. My observation is as speculative as yours. A meta reality is that such a generalisation can’t be made as there are enough exceptions to your postulation. If an investment is seen through the prism of an enterprise management, the ownership doesn’t matter. The principles of running a business would always be true and market should be an arbiter to decide its success or failure. Premeditated assumption is a sure recipe for bias. By that logic, any unrelated diversification by any entrepreneur could also be interpreted as an irrational exuberance of optimism and expansion of clout. A spirit of enterprise to create wealth needs to be encouraged without abjuring the path of stakeholder capitalism (not crony capitalism or unbridled trampling of compassionate capitalism).