Malayalam Webdunia shifting operations or shutting down?

The first Malayalam portal from Kerala, malayalam.webduniya.com, has decided to stop operations in Kerala. It is believed that the decision is due to the rising concerns of a prolonged economic crisis spreading through out the world including the media industry.

The portal’s founder editor T. Sasimohan confirmed the closure decision, saying the company’s chief operating officer and president Pankaj Jain told him last week about the end of Kerala operations. Sasimohan joined as Editor of Malayalam Webdunia during 2000 November leaving his top journalistic position in Mathrubhumi, the second largest Malayalam daily.

It is understood that Webdunia Malayalam team in Trivandrum is not ready to move to Chennai. Sometime back Webdunia management team visited Trivandrum and revealed their intention to move the office to Chennai, since the team members were not ready to move the idea was kept in cold storage.

Now Webdunia Malayalam have to findout a new members to update their site. They have a small Malayalam team for their localisation work and Yahoo updates. So they will be able to do that. But with out a strong content leadership the site will be in trouble in the future. But the question is whether they are just shifting the operations to Chennai or closing down the portal?

[Remember the  webdunia  yahoo incident of plagiarism. - see more about that here, here and here - Content team created with entry fresh graduates and managed by people with minuscule or no experience in the area of content was the reason for that, I understand.]

Is the same thing going to happen in malayalam.webdunia.com?

Last week medianama reported that, country’s largest media house Times of India Groups is planning to lay off around five percent staff. In this lot Times Internet will be sending around 200 people out.