i-next’s bi-lingual strategy finds resonance with English news channels

‘Bi-lingual’ is back in vogue, thanks to the TV news channels. When Arnab Goswami’s English News channel venture Republic TV launched, it created an instant bond with the viewers, not just with its news reports, but also the language used, which is a mix of English and Hindi. The channel has also been airing playing the bytes of people taken in both the languages. Following this, Times Now has also gone bi-lingual in its news reports. 

However, bi-lingual in the media space is not a new phenomenon. i-next, the youth-focussed compact publication from Jagran Prakashan, launched in a bilingual format and caught on to the pulse of the Young at Heart in a very short span of time. It now covers 12 prominent cities in 4 states of India through its various editions. The i-next success story owes a lot to the very decision of reporting in the true and real language use by the people. 

Elaborating on i-next’s bi-lingual strategy, Alok Sanwal, COO, Dainik Jagran inext , said, “During the scheduled researches, urban readers had been hinting towards ‘simple to read’ newspaper. A newspaper, which could be ‘read & skimmed’ both in the ‘language of the reader’ for an upwardly mobile reader with a fast pace of life, was core thought behind use of English and spoken words from local language, be it Urdu, Awadhi or Bhojpuri.” 

Continuing further, Sanwal said, “The benchmark was to bring out the newspaper in the ‘spoken language’. In the initial days during the launch preparation phase, news copy was written and edited again and again, reporters were encouraged to file the story in the spoken language and desk was advised to ensure that flow of language remains unaffected while editing the story.” 

From the Sanskritised Hindi, language was brought to spoken Hindi with clear instructions to not remove any English word which is generally used in spoken language.