Journal of Global Communication Vol. 8, No. 1, January-June 2015 : 23-35 DOI: 10.5958/0976-2442.2015.00003.8 Research Article 23 Vol. 8, No. 1, January-June 2015 I ndian J ournals.com A product of Diva Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. Issues of Rural Development in Mainstream Journalism: Exploring New Strategies for Media Intervention C.S.H.N. Murthy Professor, Department of Mass Communication and Journalism, Tezpur University, Napaam, Tezpur-784028, Assam, India Email id: cshnmurthy@yahoo.co.in ABSTRACT The present study, which is in the form of a vision document, intends to explore alternative ways of linking up expanding media business with the rural development in such a way that both rural economy and media economy get entrenched into a win–win situation. In the process, the study offers an overview of how the print and electronic media have been consistently neglecting the coverage of rural issues that has resulted in the lopsided growth of Indian economy. The study further argues that extending support to rural issues/problems of development has become, for long, solely the job of government driven media without the participation of either public or private sector electronic media. A number of quantitative studies documented earlier only proved that the space devoted for the development journalism in the mainstream press was negligible compared to their marketing and industry coverage. While the success of rural newspapers has the dubious distinction of espousing the cause of rural India, a holistic approach to the problems of rural India is yet wanting on the media front. Grounded in qualitative communication research, the present study discursively endeavours to offer some strategies of expansion of media that offers new vistas of business and marketing for the media industry by converting the most important and burning issues of rural India into windows of inclusive growth and progress, besides bridging the digital divide between the rural and the urban India. KEYWORDS: Rural development, Mainstream press, Radio and television, Globalisation, Digital divide AN OVERVIEW OF PRINT MEDIA COVERAGE OF RURAL ISSUES – CASE STUDIES OF NAMRA AND NINAN Many quantitative studies conducted on the role of ‘development journalism’ in Indian media so far established that the rural issues are not of any significance to the media in terms of their market promotion strategies (Murthy, 2000; Murthy et al., 2010; Namra, 2005; Sainath, 2002, 2007). Speaking about the moral matrix of inequality, Sainath (2002) castigated the Indian media for its ‘growing disconnect between the reality in the country and its function’ (Kamat, 2008). In a similar way, Namra (2005), the editor of Charkha, in an article written to The Hoot, says that ‘In a country like India, where a host of development issues need to be addressed, the media can highlight the problems and the challenges faced by the people working at the grass root level’. He further questions, ‘Do the media really make any significant contribution towards these issues? Does it use this power to influence people in a manner which would lead to social welfare? What is the media’s contribution towards the uplift of the poor and the rural people?’ Namra (2005), quoting the survey conducted by the Charkha Feature Service jointly with the National Development Communication Net Work and Manthan Yuwa Sansthan, which scanned the regional newspapers in the three newly formed states, Chattisgarh, Uttaranchal and Jharkhand, for three months on the coverage of issues that concern the rural India most (namely poverty, health, women, education, panchayat, agriculture, livelihood, corruption, environment and crime), expressed the anguish at the apathy of the public and the media as well towards the plight of people living in the rural areas. The ‘content analysis’ study looked at the page on which the article is published whether the coverage is urban or rural, the source of the news organisations, government, reporter or news agencies and the leaning of these news items and so on. In spite of being a new state, Jharkhand, having the circulation of leading news papers like The Hindustan, The Prabhat Khabar and The Ranchi Express (all Hindi language dailies) and the two English dailies, The Telegraph and The Hindustan Times, the study found that a