The cover of the 9 August 2010 issue of Time magazine. For a change, all four editions—US, Europe, Asia and South Pacific—have the same cover story. Time‘s choice is doubtless provocative, one reason journalism exists. Yet, such eagerness and such a desire to provoke isn’t visible on home turf, where a quixotic self-censorship kicks into…
Monthly Archives: July 2010
If the writing is on the wall, it is Newsworthy
You can wrap fish (or bajji or bhujia) with newspapers. You can swat a fly or a mosquito. You can even make an improvised weapon with it. Well, how about covering your wall with it, as Lori Weitzner says we can do?
When nothing’s sacred, everything’s suspect
In the cynicism that now envelopes modern Indian journalism, even the Ramnath Goenka awards for excellence in journalism awarded by the Indian Express are not beyond ideologically motivated barbs. This letter to the editor of The Pioneer was published by the right-wing daily on Wednesday, 28 July, and it leaves no room for doubt about…
The newspaper cartoon that offended Christians
On Sunday, The Times of India carried this 8-column illustration by Neelabh to highlight the travails of R.K. Laxman‘s common man at a time of galloping food prices. Titled “The Lost Supper” and bearing a likeness to Leonardo da Vinci‘s Last Supper, the illustration conveyed the helplessness of the aam admi at the hands of…
Prabha Dutt fellowship for women journalists
The Sanskriti Foundation in collaboration with the Prabha Dutt memorial foundation is inviting applications from Indian women journalists in the 25-40 age group for the Prabha Dutt fellowship for excellence in journalist, in memory of the pioneering Hindustan Times journalist. The fellowship covering a period of 10 months offers Rs 100,000 for women journalists to…
Yes, Arnab Goswami is TV journalist of the year
The full list of the winners of the Ramnath Goenka excellence in journalism awards for 2008-09. Print journalist of the year: Siddharth Varadarajan of The Hindu Broadcast journalist of the year: Arnab Goswami of Times Now After presenting the awards, the President of India, Pratibha Patil, outlined “crisis of content and triumph of the trivial”…
Medium is the message in a movie hall queue
No mention of Marshall McLuhan in the global village is complete without “the medium is the message” bit. On his birth annivesary, Boing Boing digs up a scene from Woody Allen‘s Annie Hall.
The arrival of a television anchor foretold
Kanchan Gupta in The Pioneer: “Interviewing prospective students for a media school can be a useful experience. It provides you with an insight into how media is perceived among the young who shall inherit the world from us. “I usually begin by asking the applicants whether they want to pursue a career in print journalism…
Tarun J. Tejpal on the five facets of his life
Tarun J. Tejpal, editor of Tehelka, in Hi! Blitz, the in-flight journal of Kingfisher airlines: On his father, an army officer: “He gave us an idea of the big world. It was a routine to discuss world history and affairs at the dinner table. When I was seven, I knew the names of secretary-generals of…
How (free) India treats Foreign Correspondents
PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: Indian politicians and patriots have long held the belief that the “western” media only relays bad news from Bharat. That, despite all the towering progress made by the emerging superpower, foreign correspondents based out of India only tell their news consumers about death, disease, despair and disillusionment in our…
In the dosa joint where ‘our beloved father’ ate
New Delhi’s most famous media canteen—the one at the news agency United News of India (UNI)—finally steps out of the margins into the gossip columns. Facsimile: courtesy Mail Today Also read: Why the Indian media doesn’t take on Ambanis Sorry brother, we got a few million dollars wrong How media hyped up the Reliance Power…
How serious is the trouble at CNBC & CNN-IBN?
Raghav Bahl‘s Network 18 group has restructured its business plan. Again. All the loss-making broadcast businesses—CNBC TV18, CNN-IBN, IBN7, etc—are under one roof, and the digital and publishing initiatives—moneycontrol.com, Infomedia, etc—under another. Debashis Basu writes in the personal finance magazine Moneylife that this is an old trick aimed at buying time and raising money by…
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar gets gag order on Agni, TV9
The following is the full text of the press release issued by “India’s future Nobel laureate“, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar‘s art of living (AoL) foundation on an injunction order obtained by it against sections of the media in Bangalore following the recent spurt of news: “On behalf of Vyakti Vikas Kendra (VVKI), India, and the…
Daily exercise improves newspaper circulation
Indian publications are full of facts; the fiction is in their circulation figures. Cooked up with great expertise, garnished liberally with an extra zero, certified by audit agencies which will consume any shit, and then lovingly dished out to agencies and advertisers, the number of actual copies sold is a joke. Especially with complimentary copies,…
‘News is the subtlest form of advertising’
M.J. Akbar in Deccan Herald: “News is the subtlest form of advertising. Perhaps we should be generous to journalism and qualify that: news can become the most subtle form of advertising, particularly when it comes dressed in quotation marks…. “We customers of democracy buy words without enquiry about their value. This encourages those in power…
If TV cameras are OK, why not still cameras?
The courts do not allow photographers to shoot pictures inside a courtroom, although they will allow illustrators to get away drawing courtroom scenes which have almost no likeness with reality. Ditto, the legislature. This, above, is a scene from the Vidhana Soudha in Bangalore where a joint session of the State legislature is on. Photographers…
First lessons from the flirtatious hotshot editor
Penguin Canada bossman David Davidar‘s hurriedly buried “consensual flirtatious” relationship with a colleague that resulted in his being sacked from the publishing house has prompted Priya Ramani, editor of Lounge, the Saturday section of Mint, to make public her own tryst with a “hotshot editor”: “I’ll never forget my first job interview. “The hotshot editor…
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar threatens to sue tabloid
PALINI R. SWAMY writes from Bangalore: A full-fledged war has broken out between “India’s future Nobel laureate“, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and underworld don-turned-journalist-turned-film maker, ‘Agni‘ Sridhar, with the godman’s Art of Living foundation threatening a preemptive Rs 50 crore defamation suit against the latter. The suit just comes four days after AoL claimed it…
‘Middle-class media doesn’t speak for poor’
P. Sainath, the Magsaysay Award-winning rural affairs editor of The Hindu, says the media did a poor job of explaining the impact of the recent fuel price hike on the poor while it expended time and space on the suicide of supermodel Viveka Babajee. Delivering the silver jubilee lecture on “Mass Media: But where are…
IJR 