At the 11th Magazine Congress in New Delhi experts debated the challenges and opportunities that the medium provides in an era where digital and social have taken the lead. At the inaugural one-on-one session between Aroon Purie, Chairman & Editor-in-chief of India Today Group and Anurag Batra, Chairman & Editor-in-chief BW Businessworld & Exchage4media Group, Purie spoke about how magazines have bought into a self defeating narrative. “Magazines are great products in terms of having great curated content. We have somehow not pushed ourselves while the platform is open to so much of innovation. We have also bought into the narrative that magazines are dying and I think part of it is also self defeating” said Purie Speaking about the need for a new, re-imagined approach to print magazines, Purie added, “I think one of the biggest issues is that we have undersold ourselves and underleveraged ourselves. We have to come up with things that suit us in terms of research that is designed for magazines and not research that is designed for newspapers, which have different audience.” Talking about the scope and future of print magazines in India, Purie believes that the new model of magazines serving niche communities helps in targeting the audiences more effectively. Purie also spoke about the opportunity that digital allows in terms of amplification. “You have to engage your audience in whichever way you can and build communities for your magazines. These are all great opportunities that have been made available to us. Moreover, the possibility of amplification in today’s news media is immense. If you do a small good story today, people catch on to it and the scope for its amplification and its amplification is huge. We require journalists with a different mindset, people who are willing to accept today’s environment and who consider digital as their friend and not enemy,” Purie further added.