29. Smart news for the Smartphones in the Era of Data Journalism

In 2022, Dailyhunt, a mobile news-aggregating mobile app achieved unicorn status, joining another app Inshorts in the list as the leading news aggregator in India. While technology firms appluad this shift, legacy media raised its user-friendly nature over news authenticity.  This prompts questions about the evolving  nature of news curation and repurposing strategies. Why are these mobile-only internet-first news applications gaining popularity in South Asia, including India? While such mobile applications are on the rise, there is also a concern about older and more conventional news producers losing ground. This anxiety is perhaps symptomatic of the development of several start-ups in the space of digital journalism. As the diverse legacy news media are compromised by their weak professional ethics, conflict of interest and short-term profits, this chapter explores through interviews of personnel/news curators working with these firms to understand what goes into curating the content for these apps. This chapter also examines how digital journalism start-ups, especially internet-first news aggregators in South Asia, were built on the scope afforded by the internet growth and the upsurge in mobile usage. It further explores the strategies used to create innovative news for smartphones, particularly in India, looking at the success of ‘Dailyhunt’ and ‘In-shorts apps’. This chapter intends to navigate the other economic, professional, political and proprietary-related issues that will be used as interlocutors in the larger discourse it hopes to fathom.