Eenadu.net

Background
Eenadu is second largest circulating newspapers in the country (current circulation of 1.2 million and a readership base of 1.7 million) and commands a dominant position in the minds of the Telugu newsreaders. It is read by the rural masses as well as by the urban class A population. It has a highly influential editorial, which plays a crucial role in deciding who runs the state government in Andhra Pradesh (AP).

The newspaper is part of the Eenadu media group, which owns the largest TV network (in AP), a movie studio and a financial institution.

The Internet Opportunity / Imperative
The Telugu speaking population is by far the single largest and most influential South Asian community in the USA. The nearly 0.6 million strong population has significant achievements in the field of IT and Medicine. This diaspora has strong similarities and dissimilarities with their Telegu brethren back home. They are rich and IT savvy. Yet, they crave for the cuisine, literature and the cultural mooring that they have left behind in India. They miss their motherland and try and keep alive their links. The Internet has provided them with a very powerful method to keep in touch and come closer to the culture and the people.

Thus, the Internet was a great opportunity for Eenadu newspaper to open up a whole new market.

Design of the Online Newspaper - Sophisticated vs. Familiar
The design of the newspaper could choose to imitate the existing stylised design favoured by the Internet avatars of the American and the Indian newspaper. Conventional wisdom dictated this to be the only option. However, management was bold enough to think laterally. The NRTs (Non-Resident Telegus) were going to access Eenadu on the net because it reminded them of their past and kept them in touch what was happening there. Thus, it was decided to stick to a design format that delivered the same look and feel as that of the original newspaper. To achieve this verisimilitude, the same font as being used in the print would be used.

The content was designed to provide local news about AP from district level - which the NRT would not be able to access from any other source while being in the USA - things like district news, local film gossip, cuisine and recipe, matrimonial classified etc.

Simplifying the task of running and reading an online newspaper
The above objectives were simple to finalise at the management level - they were simple for a web developer like us to execute. But an online newspaper is made and unmade everyday at 3:00 am. The best laid plans and the most sophisticated design will come to naught if the personnel at the newspaper are not able to refresh the content in a matter of a few hours.

One could not expect Eenadu to retrain their people to take up HTML editing, nor could one expect them to hire designers and programers (God knows how much trouble we have in in hiring and retaining them!). The solution was for us to devise a very simple and intuitive content management tool. This tool demands only the very basic computer skills from the people in charge of the editing - the ability to maneuver the mouse and cut and paste. Today the team of 10 sub-editors are able to publish over 300 pages within a few hours time.

As mentioned before, part of the brief was to maintain the look and feel of the newspaper and we duplicated the special font onto the site. However, if you have ever been to a vernacular language site and had to download a font software to read it, you will realize what a frustrating experience it is - and if you access the site from multiple computers, than you might as well as forget about it. Our solution was to embed the font as a dynamic font (in .eot and .pfr formats)
so that it gets published along with the html page. This provides a fast and seamless experience.

Response from Customers
The web site has received a phenomenal response from the Telegu populace abroad - a substantial percentage of them start their day by visiting the site. Within 3 months of the launch, they have achieved the landmark figure of a million hits a day. Over 3 gigabyte of data transfer happens on a daily basis.

Ongoing Support
A website, especially a newspaper, is a continually evolving and growing organism. Emboldened by the initial success of the online newspaper, Eenadu management has chalked out an ambitious blue print for the site. We have been closely associated in ensuring that this plan gets executed timely and without disrupting the existing functioning of the site.

We migrated the site to an exclusive server by monitoring the traffic closely and anticipating the surge, well in advance.

We added an archive section on the site for those who love to look up old news and features. We have provided a video feed from the etv news to stream on the web site thus adding to the multimedia experience.

We are available on a 24x7 basis to trouble shoot or take care of exigencies - as the site is accessed in two continents it is busy round the clock.