Chandan Mitra, editor-in-chief of The Pioneer, speaking at the annual convocation of the Pioneer media school, in New Delhi on Monday: “Despite the advent of new mediums of mass communication or news dissemination over the years, print journalism is still a vital force and journalism is defined by the print media… “Students are free to…
Monthly Archives: May 2011
Our media only bothers about elite, middle-class
SHAH ALAM KHAN writes from New Delhi: In April this year the media went into a loud and vulgar rapture as Anna Hazare continued his four-day fast against corruption at Jantar Mantar in the capital. Hyperventilating TV newscasters repeatedly declared that the issue of corruption has “touched a cord” with the middle class. The circus…
‘Newspaper In Education’ has a new meaning
For decades The Times of India Relief Fund used to be the paper’s most prominent “CSR activity”. Malayala Manorama took the lead the in building houses in earthquake-hit Latur in the mid-1990s. Plenty of newspapers and magazines chipped in for the tsunami-affected in Tamil Nadu. India Today even launched a project called Care Today. Now,…
Jawaharlal Nehru: 24 ads, 11 pages in 12 papers
A week is a long time in politics, especially if you are a dead Congressman. On May 21, the 20th death anniversary of the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, various ministries, departments and State governments unleashed an advertising blitzkrieg in the media. Result: 69 ads totalling 41 pages in 12 newspapers. Today, on…
On AI 001, all the newspapers fit to read
On board Air India One, the official aircraft of the President and prime minister of India, a pile of newspapers awaits the attention of the gentlemen (and women) of the media scrum accompanying him in the briefing section of the aircraft. Thirty-three media personnel are accompanying the PM on his five-day trip to Ethiopia and…
Why iPad will never replace newspapers in India
Heather Timmons in the New York Times: “New Delhi: When Bob Haygooni paid a midflight visit to a cockpit at his new employer, Air India, he was shocked. The pilots, he said, had completely covered the windows with newspaper to keep out the sun. “‘All you had in the cockpit was this yellowish glow, as…
Rema Nagarajan of TOI bags Nieman Fellowship
Rema Nagarajan an assistant editor at The Times of India, is among 24 journalists who have been chosen for the 2011-12 class of Nieman Fellows at Harvard University. According to a Harvard announcement, Rema will “study patterns and trends in mortality, fertility and population growth and their relationship with population health, the impact of poverty,…
Malayalee reporters of Delhi, don’t be so selfish!
An item appearing in Raisina Tattle, the gossip column of the Delhi-based newspaper Mail Today, that proves once again that politicians know that the shortest route to a reporter’s heart is through the stomach. Two points stand out in this decidedly parochial carrot-and-drumstick policy: 1) Minister Thomas‘s doubtless belief (pun intended) that all Malayalee journalists…
The curious case of N.Ram, DMK and Jayalalitha
ARVIND SWAMINATHAN writes from Madras: If a picture conveys a thousand words, the picture above should convey a couple of them, and then some more. At left is N. Ram, the editor-in-chief of The Hindu, currently embroiled in a major row with his brothers N.Murali and N. Ravi (and their cousins Malini Parthasarathy, Nirmala Lakshman…
Why a unique newspaper isn’t covering the IPL
This week’s Sunday Guardian carries a story on Sparshdnyan, a newspaper in Braille for the visually impaired. Published out of Bombay twice a month, the 48-page paper is sent out to some 400 subscribers in Maharashtra. The paper’s editor Swagat Thorat estimates readership at 24,000 copies per issue, most of them in the 18-35 segment …
Khushwant Singh stands up for Barkha Dutt, again
For the second time in five months, Khushwant Singh, the former editor of the now-defunct Illustrated Weekly of India, stands up for the beleaguered NDTV group editor and anchor, Barkha Dutt, in Hindustan Times: “I shudder to think what would be left of Indian television if Barkha Dutt decides to call it a day. “For…
M.R. SHIVANNA, a true 24/7 journalist, is dead
sans serif records with regret the passing away of M.R. SHIVANNA, an unsung hero of Indian journalism, in Mysore on Saturday. He was 55, and is survived by his wife and daughter. For 30 years and more, Shivanna slogged away in remarkable obscurity and was one of the pillars on which stands India’s most successful…
Rajiv Gandhi: 69 ads over 41 pages in 12 papers
PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: On the former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi‘s 20th death anniversary today, different ministries of the Congress-led UPA government are falling over each other to demonstrate that the “collective flame of political sycophancy” continues to burn brightly and shamelessly. While Rajiv Gandhi’s widow Sonia Gandhi and their son Rahul Gandhi…
Which is why ‘Times Now’ didn’t do an exit poll?
The verdict in the assembly elections to the five States has been signed, sealed and delivered, but the battle is still on between the English TV news channels, with both Times Now and CNN-IBN making contrasting claims of their leadership on E-day and the accuracy of their exit poll and survey predictions. As the former…
Bombay journalist arrested under OSA for scoop
In the kind of incident that shines a light on the kind of police-state India is fast becoming, a former reporter of the Bombay tabloid Mumbai Mirror has been jailed under the draconian Official Secrets Act (OSA) for an article that exposed the government railway police (GRP). In June 2010, Tarakant Dwivedi wrote a lead…
Niira Radia, Mukesh Ambani, NDTV & Prannoy Roy
In conversation number #132 in the infamous Niira Radia tapes, the lobbyist whose name has become synonymous with the 2G scam, talks to M.K. Venu, then of The Economic Times, in July 2009: Venu: Is Manoj (Modi) is here (in Delhi) today also, no? Radia: Yeah, he is here, he is leaving in the afternoon,…
81-year-old hack who never files gets a 3D film
The official trailer of the first Steven Spielberg-Peter Jackson 3D film on Tintin, the boy-faced Belgian reporter is now out. Tintin, whose byline first appeared in the church newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle, would have been 81 this year. He never sat at a desk, never took notes, never filed a story and therefore never missed…
A top-down salute to a bottom-up revolution
What is the function of a “masthead”—nameplate, as some call it—in the modern era? In the eyes of the traditionalists, the masthead is the calling card of the publication, sacrosanct, something that shouldn’t be touched because that is how readers recognise their morning poison. Yes, if a newspaper is sold largely at the newsstand, but…
After Athreya and Kautilya, enter “Chanakya”
Six months after Vir Sanghvi said he had “suspended” his weekly column Counterpoint, in the wake of the Niira Radia tapes that had him dictating his weekly output to the 2G scam-tainted lobbyist for her approval, the Hindustan Times has announced a new column in the slot occupied by Sanghvi’s. The byline: “Chanakya“. In the…
Express, NDTV, Tehelka, HT & the Bhushans
PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: Three weeks ago, Tehelka magazine ran a profile on the father and son lawyer-pair, Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan, who are on the Lokpal drafting committee. Authored by Rohini Mohan, the piece inter alia repeated the canard that had been artfully spread about the Bhushans: that they had been…
IJR 