News and Me
As far as I can remember, I have been a devoted news consumer. I grew up listening to BBC World Service on shortwave radio, finding comfort in the measured tones and global perspective that connected me to the wider world. Even now, I begin each day with their crisp five-minute bulletin at 4:30 am India time shortly after I wake up. We always had multiple daily newspapers delivered to our door, creating a morning breakfast routine of page turning.
Television in India was dominated by Doordarshan and All India Radio until India’s economic liberalisation opened new channels and perspectives. During my stay in the United States in the late 1980s, I religiously watched the evening network broadcasts on ABC, NBC, and CBS, with ABC’s Peter Jennings becoming my preferred anchor for his authoritative yet approachable delivery style.
For a period, television news in India maintained reasonable balance and journalistic standards before its unfortunate degeneration. As The Economist recently observed with characteristic directness: “Indian TV news long ago relinquished membership of the reality-based community. Night after night presenters praise the government and the prime minister, heap scorn upon the opposition, disparage minorities and foreigners, and insult on-air guests who dare to utter an errant word. The nationalist types who make up the audience treat it as amusement: a kind of World Wrestling Entertainment substitute.” This transformation prompted me to abandon television news consumption entirely several years ago.
My current news diet focuses heavily on technology and business coverage. Techmeme serves as my primary aggregator, supplemented by paid digital subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, Economist, and Bloomberg. Among Indian publications, I particularly value Business Standard and Mint for their analytical depth and editorial independence. Reading now has a secondary purpose: curating interesting snippets for my blog’s Thinks section.
During the IndiaWorld era, news aggregation was central to our mission. I created Samachar.com as India’s first major news aggregator, which became the homepage for millions of Indians globally. This was accomplished through headline scraping—a primitive but effective method in the pre-RSS, pre-Google News era that demonstrated the appetite for curated, comprehensive news consumption.
Despite industry enthusiasm, I haven’t embraced podcasts as extensively as perhaps I should. Reading remains my preferred information consumption method, particularly for the research that informs my blog’s analytical sections. Similarly, I spend minimal time on X (formerly Twitter), preferring to encounter relevant content through my curated reading sources and WhatsApp forwards on a few trusted groups.
Lighter content has always provided welcome relief from serious news consumption. The Sunday comics supplement during my US years was a cherished weekly ritual. During my IIT days, solving The Times of India’s cryptic crossword became a daily intellectual challenge. Today, The New York Times Games—Connections, Wordle, The Mini—provide similar daily mental stimulation.
I subscribe to numerous newsletters, yet they’ve remained frustratingly unchanged through the decades. Their singular focus remains driving clicks to websites or apps where traditional display advertising can be monetised—a model that feels increasingly antiquated and inefficient.
This represents precisely where I see the transformative opportunity: reimagining newsletters as complete experiences within the email inbox itself, powered by ActionAds that eliminate the click-through penalty whilst creating superior user experiences and sustainable monetisation. The future of news consumption lies not in forcing readers away from their inboxes, but in making the inbox itself the destination—rich, interactive, and profitable. This is where NeoMails and NeoN come in.
