Peter Cole in The Guardian, London: “Journalism is basically a simple game. It is about finding things out and telling other people about them. The finding out requires a variety of skills because those in power often prefer that we know only so much. Journalism is about holding such people to account, exposing their humbug…
Monthly Archives: September 2008
It’s not enough if you are just what you eat
On Aaj Tak, India’s leading Hindi news channel, a moment of stunning simplicity in an era of conspicuous consumption. Rahul Gandhi, the crown prince of the Congress party, has his dietary habits broken over live TV. Link via Chetan Krishnaswamy Also read: Cold is gold for the unwashed unmillions After Big B’s cold, small screen…
Infochange Media Fellowships for 2008
PRESS RELEASE: http://www.infochangeindia.org (managed by the Centre for Communication and Development Studies) invites applications for its 2008 media fellowships in areas related to social justice/sustainable development in India. Three fellowships are on offer to journalists and researchers. Proposals that illustrate topical issues and contemporary debates in the social sector—from environment, poverty, livelihoods, public health, women…
Rupert Murdoch on India, China and democracy
The controversial media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, on India and China, in Esquire: “Any company that is global cannot ignore China or India. They are just enormous, emerging great powers. I enjoy China. I have a lot of friends there. But all we have there are the moment is a few very minor investments. “India is…
The blood stains of a language murdered
Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, the former editor of The Statesman and a wordsmith par excellence, in The Telegraph, Calcutta: “Speaking many years ago at Secunderabad’s Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages on editing an English-language newspaper in India, I recalled having to explain to young journalists that a district is a geographical term and does…
‘Media’s double standards to measure terrorism’
The “Eye for an Eye” email sent out by the “Indian Mujahideen” before the Delhi blasts on Saturday, while using the “injustice and oppression inflicted upon Muslims all over the country” as a justification for the attack, also targets the Indian English print media in particular: “The coverage of news by both the electronic as…
Who on earth is Tony Buzzan and why is he here?
India’s best known investigative journalist in the internet age throws away his camera-specs and ducks behind a pair of YSL glasses for a new Channel [V] talk show to air on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 7 pm from September 19. Read a promo interview: The Tony B Show
‘Media shapes, sexes up, manipulates, distorts’
Is the media playing with the tiger’s tail? Or is the tiger cub riding the media? In other words, just how much is the media responsible for the Raj Thackeray bogey? Is the “demonisation” of Thackeray junior entirely the handiwork of sensation-seeking journalists trying to fill up the airwaves in the era of 24×7 news?…
Bolo ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’. Bolo ‘It’s a work of art’
Not that they are sensitive to these things, but the highest court in India has delivered a stinging slap on the menacing faces of the moral police and thought thugs; the connoisseurs who know exactly what we should see, hear, wear, watch, read, write, paint, feel and think. Or else. Maqbool Fida Husain‘s Bharat Mata—a…
The 21st century begins now… once again
Esquire‘s “electronic ink” cover to mark its 75th anniversary is here.
India’s greatest poet since the Bhakti movement?
PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: As Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw showed, if you have to die, you must die somewhere in the vicinity of Delhi, so that the movers, shakers and brokers of the capital can easily assemble to “bid a tearful farewell”. If you write a book, you must write do so somewhere…
Behind the magazine mailed from the future
Kevin Kelly on how the iconic tech magazine Wired was conceptualised: “We thought of it as a magazine that appeared as if it had been mailed from the future…. We created a magazine we wanted to read.” Co-founder and former publisher Louis Rossetto “We weren’t prisoners of objectivity. Our mission was to deliver reality…. We…
‘Journalism is still the world’s best profession’
Columbian author and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez in a conversation with students and journalists in Monterey, Mexico. “We enjoy it when we find a jewel (of a story), but suffer like dogs when we see language used badly… but it is still the best profession.” Photograph: courtesy AFP
Any number will do when the game is of numbers
How does an English newspaper—a new entrant in a colourful, chaotic, “conservative”, cinema-mad, cutout-filled City—connect to the masses? If you are The Hindu, you establish synergies with the prim and proper Madras Music Academy, and collaborate with some of its classical katcheris to the soft rustle of Kanjeevarams. If you are The Times of India,…
T.S. NAGARAJAN: The Sharada Prasad only I knew
More than a few people have been intrigued by sans serif‘s description of H.Y. Sharada Prasad as the ultimate exemplar of the “Mysore School of Writing“—not too light, not too heavy. And the questions have come flying at us: Is there really such a thing as “Mysore School of Writing”, like the Mysore School of…
H.Y. SHARADA PRASAD PASSES AWAY IN DELHI
sans serif announces with deep regret the passing away of Holenarsipur Yoganarasimha Sharada Prasad, aka H.Y. Sharada Prasad, the legendary Mysorean who served as media advisor to three prime ministers of India, in New Delhi, on Tuesday, 2 September 2008. He was 84 years old, and is survived by his wife Kamalamma, and two sons.…
IJR 