Independent News & Media Holdings Sri Lanka Ltd., is a work in progress. It's a content organization. We believe that as we progress as a country, and with the rapid developments in technology - we are leap frogging over other countries because we don't have legacy systems in place dragging down the speed of technology uptake - the Internet would take precedent over printed news. This would not be
in the very near future, but at least in the next five years and we want to position ourself in the lead here. Secondly, it is going to be trilingual. The modalities of this is still being worked out, but there will be no difference in the content, the branding ( look and feel ) and the policy of each language stream - they will be exactly the same, just in a different language. Content itself is expected to be more in-depth, more to do with numbers, facts and figures rather than politics or crime or talking heads. We are looking at the Economic Times Sunday Edition of India as a model. A 13 member board of trustees, comprising of some eminent persons will set a three year strategy, which is expected to be liberal democratic in general outlook. The organization will not claim to be unbiased or independent, but will be fully transparent in its biases and will follow a 100% disclosure policy, both towards its investors - will come to that in a minute - and relationships and biases of its employees - who are also the owners. The ownership structure is two fold. The voting shares, or the the management rights are vested with the trustees, who will manage the Employee Share Ownership Plan (ESOP) while the investors, the people who will put the money in, will own non-voting shares. To make the whole thing attractive to the investors, the non-voting shares will get 70% of the profits.
