Partly because of our colonial past and partly because of abominable present, the BBC has become the voice of reason and authority for most literate Indians, journalists and otherwise. Radio, television or internet, in English, Hindi or Urdu, we devour “Auntie” (as the Beeb is called in old bilayati) and can’t tire of repeating how…
Monthly Archives: April 2007
Stocks yesterday. Books today. Tomorrow?
As the delivery of information instantly and instantaneously becomes possible through a variety of devices (television, internet, mobile phones to name just three) the accountants who masquerade as managers but are not brave enough to call themselves editors have been forced to ask themselves some seemingly tough questions. Like, do we really need to provide…
Once upon a time, journalism as it was
In love? Married? Threat to national security?
How close can a reporter get to the subject she is covering? Close enough for her to call him a “close friend” and a “very polished person”? Close enough for him to call her as “no more than a good friend”? Close enough to receive a gold ring from him? Close enough to spark rumours…
Boot is on the other foot in ex-PM’s family
In the evening of his political life, H.D. Deve Gowda has emerged as a minor terror for young reporters. Eyebrows furrowed all the time, with a scowl permanently plastered on his face, the former prime minister is alternately fretting, frowning and fuming at all and sundry, especially sundry. “Some of my reporters, especially women, plainly…
‘Our mass media are ignoring plight of the poor’
The poor have been largely forgotten, ignored, sidelined and marginalised in the national reform agenda of liberalisation and globalisation adopted by our political leadership, wrote K.N. Hari Kumar, the former editor of Deccan Herald, in a piece on the edit of the paper this week. “Following this lead, the mass media also has in recent…
Three ways to write better: write, read, talk
Dr Roy Peter Clark, senior scholar and vice-president at The Poynter Institute in Florida, and the author most recently of Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, speaks to G. Ananthakrishnan in today’s Hindu on the three paths before journalists to write better. “There are three paths to improve writing. “One is to write,…
Provocation is in the eyes of the editor
There used to be a guy called “Regret” Iyer in Bangalore not too long ago, a man who had immortalised all the rejection slips he had accumulated as a writer and cartoonist, in his name. Wonder what he would make of this one. Scott Adams, the creator of hugely syndicated Dilbert, this week had the…
Reporter who broke fake encounter deaths story
This man is Prashant Dayal. He was once an autorickshaw driver. Now he is a journalist. A senior reporter with the Gujarati daily Divya Bhaskar. He broke the story in November 2006 of the fake encounter deaths in Gujarat, which led to the unprecedented arrest of three ranking police officers on Tuesday. Dayal who writes…
After all India’s greatest spinner was a Gandhi
Do sections of the Indian media live in their own unique world, far removed from the one its readers, listeners and viewers inhabit? Congress MP Rahul Gandhi‘s “road-show” in the Uttar Pradesh election campaign has, by most accounts, been a rank disaster. The turnout has been so feeble that the “future of UP” has been…
Do Time magazine’s lists mean anything at all?
Time magazine is compiling its list of the 100 most influential people of the year—and it wants YOU to do all the hard work. It has ten Indians on the list. The American Idol contestant Sanjay Malakar, Manmohan Singh, social worker Anna Hazare, Sonia Gandhi, Pepsi chief Indra Nooyi, the prince who said he was…
Coming: Google vs The Newspapers of the World
YouTube has already got into trouble with Viacom, which owns MTV, for allowing users to put up content over which it (YouTube) has no proprietory control. Is a similar battle looming between YouTube’s owner Google and the newspapers of the world? As things stand, the content of newspapers is freely available on Google and Google…
Does your reader love his newspaper this much?
A television commercial for the Romanian business newspaper Ziarul Financiar.
Will this man be the next US Secretary of State?
When Indian journalists like M.J. Akbar, Arun Shourie, Chandan Mitra, Sudheendra Kulkarni et al cosy up to politicians, tout a particular ideological line, stand for elections, grab non-journalistic posts, negotiate deals, etc, we look at them with a slight degree of circumspection. Are they, you wonder, misusing their editorial positions and platforms to advance a…
The birth of a newspaper: live and in colour
How is a new newspaper put out? What goes into the making of a newspaper office? What kind of carpet do they have? Where do the editors sit? How do the dummy issues look? Why did they choose a particular font or design? Why do newspapers do what they do? Most times the reader is…
Indian newspapers: about to take off or crash?
The state of Indian newspapers and its future is the flavour of the season. The launch of a new newspaper, the addition of an edition or a dozen, the creation of new supplements,… all seem to produce oodles of purple prose, in Indian as well as western publications. Unlike in the United States and more…
David Halberstam: Rest in peace
David Halberstam, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Powers That Be, the definitive biography of the American media, died in a car accident in the Bay Area in San Francisco yesterday. He was 73. Halberstam had come to Berkeley to give a talk on ‘Turning Journalism Into History’. “A writer should be like a playwright…
‘Cho Ramaswamy’s behaviour isn’t bizarre’
A clarification in The Hindu on April 20, 2007: The heading of a box item accompanying a story —on the shootings at Virginia Tech University, U.S. (“Embassy staff meet Indian students”, April 19, 2007, page 1)—was “Cho’s behaviour was bizarre”. Though it was a box in an item on the killings in the U.S and…
The base-five calendars of our magazines
Magazines, and increasingly newspapers too, love producing thick, fat anniversary issues with the “Best of” stamp on them. But does the reader care for such “shamelss self-regard”, asks Jack Shafer. Publishers love the self-valentines because they make the anniversary issue a “destination” for advertisers—much easier to sell than the crap that’s published the rest of…
Samyukta Karnataka fete in a controversy
“MARK BRADSHAW” writes from Hubli: The Vice President of India Bhairon Singh Shekawat is all set to commit a faux pas of propriety when he visits Hubli on Sunday to participate in a function being organised to celebrate the platinum jubilee of Samyukta Karnataka, the leading Kannada daily of the state published by the Loka…
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