Andre Schiffrin, a veteran of publishing in America and the founder of the first Non-Profit Publishing house ‘The New Press’ spoke to Soham Bose about the future of the print, the internet and the quiet unfolding of a neo-colonial umbrella over publishing in India and the bibliographic globe…
Newspapers which were independent are succumbing under pressure. The future of the publishing world with rise of new global powers like Brazil, India and China are changing. What are your views on that?
The problem is more with the establishment of colonialism in the framework of publishing in Latin America. All major publishers are European endeavours. They do not work with any independent local publishers. And Pearson which owns Financial Times and Penguin, started out with owning its own waterworks in Buenos Aires. You have a pattern of colonial development which is continuing in globalisation.
You were the founding member of SBS a major left wing student organisation in America. There is a thriving student movement here in India, which is largely left, any comments on that?
I can’t say anything about it. This is my first week in India.
With advent of self publishing, how badly do you think the printing world will get affected by online materials like blogs and self publishing?
It could. In China, there are ten million blogs. Who is going to know what to look at? It is very hard. The fate of print is not very secure. We’ll have to take some measures to safeguard. American and English press have lost a huge amount of money and perished at the altar of internet. But I can still see classified ads in Indian newspapers. Without that advertising support, how can the press continue? That’s the main question in the new book.
There is a way in which newspapers can survive without advertisements. I have some very concrete solutions in the book ‘The Business of Words’. They can survive the way BBC survived by taxing its viewers, there is a tax on television in England. I suggest taxing advertisements on the internet and using that money to fund newspapers.
With state support, wouldn’t that impinge on the freedom of media, and its unbiased coverage be curbed?
That is not the point. The funds go directly to the media, not to the government. You have to find ways to keep it clean. There is whole chapter in my book on media in Norway where every newspaper gets funding from the government and there haven’t been any problems so far.
You have mentioned publishing as largely artisanal. How will it fit in this paradigm?
What I believe is that publishing has been largely artisanal until recently but has become more industrial. In India you have all sorts of mechanisms to support the press. It has to be done openly and fairly, of that there is no doubt. If the government could buy books for public libraries, it’d serve two purposes, like it did in Norway. One, it helps serve the purpose of literacy and secondly, it helps the publishers fund themselves.
What do you think of the Occupy Wall Street movement?
I think it is high time we had such a reaction. I hope it works.
Do you think it is funded by corporate houses as there are allegations on the internet that the protests are acting as ‘safety valves’ to defuse far more serious grievances?
I haven’t seen proof of any such thing. So what if it is all over the internet, it doesn’t mean it is true. That is the problem with the internet. You have no idea what is right and wrong. That’s why Chinese government employs thousands of people to monitor what’s on the internet simply to give government direct line to its people. That is one of the reasons why you need newspapers. Quarter of people in America think Obama was a foreigner. It goes on in the minds of the people because of the internet. There are people who systematically lie on the internet.
So does that mean internet is not doing anything great for the freedom of press?
No, it can be useful but it can also be very dangerous and that is why you need press to say what is right and what is wrong.
How will you implement that kind of framework on the internet? It’s a free platform after all…
Yes you can. I think part of the role of the press should be critically reviewing the internet information.
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