From The Hindustan Times: “During an interaction with women journalists, Rajya Sabha MP Jaya Bachchan turned the tables on a young journalist. The journalist asked, ‘Agar Sonia [Gandhi] aap ko bulayengi to kya aap Congress mein jaoge? (Will you join the Congress if Sonia calls you?)’ “Bachchan’s reply came pat: ‘You refer to her as…
Monthly Archives: March 2010
Express declares ceasefire; brothers declare war
The tussle between The Indian Express and The Hindu following the former’s reports (Part I and Part II) on the boardroom happenings in the latter has predictably and understandably gone cold after N. Ram‘s belligerent announcement of “criminal and civil defamation proceedings”. Express bossman Shekhar Gupta is said to have instructed staff to go easy…
Gandhi for the goose ain’t Gandhi for the gander?
Mail Today, the tabloid newspaper published by the India Today group, has launched a smart print and outdoor campaign in New Delhi. With the tagline “The world has changed”, the campaign pits the past with the present. Kapil Dev, in his classic bowling action, but with cheer girls in the background. The new maharaja of…
What men can do, women journos can do better
PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: Has the Indian Women’s Press Corps (IWPC) in New Delhi completely overshadowed the Press Club of India as the den where the bold-faced names like to meet the capital’s hack-pack? While the PCI, open to men and women, has been unable to shake off its notoriety as the watering…
Now, it’s Malini Parthasarathy vs ‘The Stalinists’
In the great undivided Hindu family, the fiery former executive editor Malini Parthasarathy, is the odd woman out after the reassignment of familial duties. And she lets it hang all out on her Twitter account. The board of directors of Kasturi & Sons comprises the descendants of four cousins G. Narasimhan, S. Parthasarathy, S. Rangarajan,…
It’s official: Rajeev Chandrashekar-KP alliance
After days of speculation, the official confirmation. Former BPL scion and Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrasekhar‘s “strategic partnership alliance” with Express publications for control of Kannada Prabha is now out. (The transaction, when completed, is said to be valued at Rs 250 crore.) Below is the full text. *** “Jupiter Media and Entertainment Ventures (Jupiter)…
Not just about the brothers, it’s the children too
Far from being cowed down by N. Ram‘s threat to sue for the “demonstrable falsehoods and defamatory assertions” in its report on “Ram’s role and actions in developments within the newspaper group and the company“, the Indian Express continues its coverage of the goings-on in the board room of the “Mount Road Mahavishnu” for the…
Tomorrow’s news today: spot the difference
PALINI R. SWAMY writes from Bangalore: The first clear indications of the shape of things to come at Kannada Prabha, the struggling Kannada daily of Manoj Kumar Sonthalia‘s New Indian Express group, have appeared on its imprintline today. What, till yesterday, used to be an “Express Publications (Madurai) Ltd” publication (left) has overnight become a…
Indian Express vs The Hindu, N. Ram vs N. Ravi
*** The Indian Express, Delhi, has a front-page “exclusive” on the fracas in the family controlling The Hindu, Madras. The main points the Express story (also simultaneouly carried in its sister-business daily Financial Express) by media correspondent Archna Shukla makes are: a) disagreements over the “proposed retirement” of publisher and editor-in-chief N. Ram; b) the…
The decentralisation of paid-for news begins
The election commission of India likes to pretend that it came to know of the phenomenon of “paid news”—advertisements being slipped in under the garb of news to circumvent expenditure norms— only after recent reports of its widespread use during the 2009 recent general elections. Well, here’s more news for the EC. A journalist with…
RSS feed: New BJP chief spikes journalists
Coomi Kapoor in the Indian Express on the journalists’ contingent in the new team of BJP office-bearers. Also read: For the BJP, is the pen mightier than the trishul? Who are the journalists running, ruining BJP? L.K. Advani: PM maybe but not a very good sub Don’t laugh: do journalists make good politicians? ‘The lone…
Rajeev Chandrasekhar eyeing ‘Kannada Prabha’?
PALINI R. SWAMY writes from Bangalore: Bangalore’s media circles are abuzz with rumours that Kannada Prabha, the struggling Kannada newspaper owned by the New Indian Express group, is being eyed by the Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who also owns the 24×7 Kannada news channel Suvarna News. Obviously, there are no confirmations or denials of…
No Holes Barred when Express journalists reunite
The late Indian Express chief sub-editor H.Y. Sharada Prasad—later, media advisor to three Indian prime ministers—wrote famously that “nostalgia is no longer what it used to be”. In other words, there is nothing more tiresome than someone who harks back to the “good old days”. Nevertheless, journalists coming together is always a cause for much…
If you trust polls, trust in Indian media dips
As the blizzard of paid-for news, cooked-up results, corruption scandals, cross-media ownership, conflict of interest, etc blows across the Indian media landscape, the 2010 Edelman trust barometer shows a sharp drop in trust in the news media in India over the past two years. # Trust in business magazines: down to 47% from 72% #…
It takes 3 Idiots to call the bluff of Pauper Tigers
The prostitution of Indian journalism by pimps, promoters and proprietors selling editorial space without letting the reader know what is independently verified news and what is a paid-for advertisement in the garb of news, has attained pandemic proportions. “Paid News”, as the trend has been sadly named, happens not just during election time, but in…
Because, when dog bites dog, it’s news
Shekhar Gupta‘s Indian Express sticks it into Harish Khare, the former chief of bureau of The Hindu in Delhi, now the prime minister’s media advisor. Image: courtesy The Indian Express Also read: Because, when dog bites man it’s not news
Wall Street Journal editor ‘denies’ minister’s SMS
M.J. Akbar‘s Sunday Guardian dishes out the garam masala of the day, outing the mischievous minister who allegedly sent allegedly inappropriate text messages to an editor of the Wall Street Journal after her recent interview with him. Last week, the Delhi tabloid Mail Today had mentioned the gossip in its columns, two days in a…
How Arun Shourie became the Express editor
Magsaysay Award-winning former Indian Express editor turned BJP ideologue, Arun Shourie, in conversation with Mahesh Sarma: How did you get the Indian Express editor’s job? Emergency had passed [in 1977]. I had got to know [Express proprietor] Ramnath Goenka through many episodes. And the Janta Party had come to power. We were staying in Mr…
10 media barons in India Today power list of 50
Ronnie Screwvala of UTV, and Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy of NDTV, are the three prominent media names missing in India Today magazine’s annual ranking of the 50 most powerful people in India for the year of the lord, 2010. Otherwise, this year’s list comprise the usual barons: Samir Jain and Vineet Jain of The…
GOOGLE: Experiment. Experiment. Experiment
Stop cribbing, start innovating, Google economist-in-chief Hal Varian‘s advice to newspapers. Varian arrives at some stunning conclusions: 1) Newspaper ad revenue is where was it ws in 1982 in inflation-adjusted dollars. 2) The medium with the largest increase in ad revenue since 1995 is cable TV, not the itnernet. 3) Online readership is only 3%…
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