Regional Indian Languages Newspapers and Their Reach

The newspapers in India can be easily categorized on the basis of circulation, language and medium of communication. On the basis of the language, there are many different newspapers since there are many different languages spoken in this country. The English news is read by people in every part of the country and this might make one believe that perhaps these are the most read ones in the country. However; the same is not true since the readership trends indicate that the Hindi newspapers steal a march over the English news on the readership front. Even though the spread of the English newspapers is more than the Hindi ones, it is the high density of population of north Indian Hindi speaking states which gives these newspapers a lead over the ones of other language. Besides the Hindi and the English papers, Urdu, Marathi, Tamil, Oriya, Punjabi and Bengali online news paper also cater to the different linguistic regions of the country. On the basis of circulation, the newspapers can be categorized as national, regional or even local. The national newspapers have a readership across different states and linguistic regions of India while the regional ones are more focused within one state or, to some extent, in the adjoining areas of the neighboring states. The local ones have a very limited circulation, covering only the news of one small part of the state or a city. On the basis of medium of communication, the news could be in the print media, the electronic media and on the internet based media (computers and mobiles). While people have long been conversant with the print and electronic media for reading or listening to the news headlines, the internet based media is far more decentralized involving greater role of public participation. Whenever you happen to read the news on your computer or on the mobile, you can also give your opinion about it. This is one a distinct advantage of the internet based media that the public participation can be done with ease. English news media is quite strong on the internet but even the regional editions of the magazines and newspapers are read to a good extent on the internet. Every media group has its own editions of the multiple language e-news websites. Delivery of news headlines is also done on the mobiles of the customers. In fact, customers have a choice on what all news they want on their mobiles. For people on the move, any movement of the share prices or the exchange rates, or even the fast changing political situation can be known in real-time by getting the news to stream in the mobile through the service provider or by using the online editions of the news on the mobiles. Even the online news portals, irrespective of their language, are optimized for mobile usage so that the readers can check the full news coverage (not just the news headlines) on cell phones from anywhere and at anytime.