Changing Media Landscape: A Study Of Urdu Newspapers In Kashmir

Abstract

With the fourth industrial revolution, the technological advancements affected the news media across the globe. The new digital age brought with it several challenges especially for the conventional forms of news dissemination in terms of its cost, quality, diversity, language proficiency and accessibility. Now, the news media has become more interactive, fast, convergent and inexpensive.
Owing to several reasons, the newspaper sector contribute majorly for the media industry in Kashmir as there are very limited number of local television channels, that too are not allowed to carry news or current affairs programs. Urdu being one of the official languages and widely spoken language in Kashmir, Urdu newspapers are the pioneers of journalism in Kashmir and Urdu newspapers still outnumber other language newspapers including English and the most widely spoken Kashmiri. The new technological advancements have posed several challenges to the Urdu press in Kashmir and have stressed this media. The current paper focuses on the operations of the Urdu newspapers in Kashmir among these advancements and whether these newspapers have been able to combat these challenges of digitalization or not. The study focuses on the challenges, new trends and the transition in the practice of Urdu Journalism in Kashmir. It focuses on different factors that pose a challenge to the existence of Urdu journalism, the hardships Urdu Press is going through and what can be done to revive the zeal of Urdu newspapers if at all any problems persist.