Case Name :      Madhyamam Newspaper: Which Way Forward?

Authors :           M.K. Nandakumar, Debi Prasanna Pati, Chandra Sekhar Satpathy, Biswarup Saha, Kriti Saxena, Arun Narayanan

Source :             Ivey Publishing

Case ID :            W14547

Discipline :        General Management

Case Length :    12 pages

Solution Sample availability : YES

Plagiarism : NO (100% Original work)

Madhymam was a Malayalam-language newspaper headquartered in Kerala, India. Launched by a conservative Islamic trust, much of the newspaper’s coverage and content were dictated by the trust’s conservative values. Though the high quality of Madhymam’s content was widely appreciated, this did not translate into the anticipated sales revenues. At least part of this shortfall was because of Madhymam’s public image as a pro-Muslim newspaper – an image that the newspaper’s management team had been making efforts to shed. Driven by its vision of becoming the largest newspaper in India, the management of Madhymam had been exploring various options to stimulate readership and sales. The task was made more difficult by the trust’s exclusionary policies on advertising, stiff competition from major local players, the entry of national players and the proliferation of regional news channels. In light of such challenges, how should Madhymam move forward?