On her blog, CNN-IBN anchor Suhasini Haider, who says she encountered seven rejections before her first job, lists five wishes for students of journalism marching out into the profession with blazing bylines in their eyes: My dear graduates I am going to hope for you that each of you gets rejected for a job in…
Monthly Archives: May 2012
‘Media doesn’t figure in society transformation’
Sheela Bhatt, senior editorial director of rediff.com and India Abroad: “Where do the media figure in this turbulent transformation of Indian society? The plain truth is: Nowhere. “Making loud noises is not journalism. There are over three million cases pending in India’s 21 courts and 26.3 million cases in the lower courts and a quarter…
No half-truths for New Delhi’s newest paper
Yes, Kumar Mangalam Birla is right: the media is a sunrise sector and further proof of it comes through the launch of New Delhi’s newest daily, the Millennium Post. The 16-page, all-colour broadsheet priced at Rs 3, boasting the tagline “No Half Truths”, was launched on May 2. (Click here to view the front page…
The role of the press in India-China relations
In which, The Economist, London sounds no different from the average bankrupt politician who blames the media for all his ills, as if India-China relations would have been a bed of roses if there were no newspapers, television, websites or magazines: “The National University of Singapore this month convened a workshop on the role of…
How Bombay is skewing the media worldview
On the day the world economy was in a tailspin and the rupee was tanking, much of the media led with a spat between Shah Rukh Khan and a security guard at the Wankhede stadium in Bombay. Much of the blame for this warped worldview rests with the Bombay media, says DNA editor-in-chief Aditya Sinha:…
Good news: ‘Media sector is a sunrise sector’
What was bazaar speculation for quite a while is now a matter of record. Aroon Purie, the bossman of the India Today group, has divested over a quarter of his holding in Living Media India Limited, in favour of one of India’s richest men, Kumar Mangalam Birla for an undisclosed sum (Business Standard reports that…
What they said when Shankar shut his Weekly
The capitulation of the Congress-led government at the Centre in the Ambedkar cartoon controversy was welcomed with the thumping of desks by parliamentarians who seemed to have little appreciation of the legendary Shankar‘s work and even less of what its inclusion in a school textbook meant. From Congress president Sonia Gandhi (whose mother-in-law Indira Gandhi…
MUST READ: ‘Shankar’s Weekly’ final editorial
Media freedom in India id est Bharat has never been a more scarce commodity than in the year of the lord 2012. The fourth estate is under concerted attack from all three pillars of our democracy—the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. Organisations mandated to protect media freedom (like the press council of India) are…
How to launch a TV channel at half the cost
On the New York Times site India Ink, Raksha Kumar writes on how the Kannada news channel Public TV got launched: “I got these lights for just 40 rupees each (76 U.S. cents) when Wipro closed one of its branches in Bangalore,” said H.R. Ranganath, chairman and managing director, pointing at the ceiling. “These cubicles,…
What they’re saying about Express ‘sue’ report
A 10-page defamation notice sent by the legal advisors of The Indian Express to Open magazine, over an interview granted to the latter by Vinod Mehta, editorial chairman of Outlook* magazine, criticising the Express ‘C’ report, is now in the public domain. The letter—on behalf of the Express, the paper’s editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta, its reporters…
“Reliance has no ‘direct’ stake in media cos”
A screengrab of the official press information bureau (PIB) release on 14 May 2012, on the shareholding of Mukesh Ambani‘s Reliance Industries in media companies. Interesting, if true. Also read: Mint says SEBI looking into RIL-Network18/TV18-ETV deal Rajya Sabha TV tears into RIL-Network18-ETV deal Will RIL-TV18-ETV deal win SEBI, CCI approval? The sudden rise of…
Sugata Raju is new editor of ‘Vijaya Karnataka’
Vijaya Karnataka, the Kannada daily from The Times of India group, has a new editor: Sugata Srinivasaraju, the former associate editor, south, of Outlook* magazine. He takes over from Vasant Nadiger who was officiating as editor following the sudden death of E. Raghavan in March. Raghavan had taken over VK from the paper’s longstanding editor…
How a Hindi newspaper editor became an MP
An item in the gossip diary in The Telegraph, Calcutta: Vivek Gupta, the editor of Sanmarg—the Hindi daily that made the cut in Mamata Banerjee‘s evaluation of newspapers that can find a place in Bengal’s libraries—had always dream of visiting the Parliament. When he took charge of Sanmarg, Gupta informed the Trinamul Congress’s Sudip Bandopadhyay…
How journalists are aiding the decadent IPL
The academic, writer and critic Mukul Kesavan in The Times of India: “The IPL is, in media terms, such a honeypot, that the traditional distinction between pundits in the electronic and print media paid to comment on sport and the commentators contracted to describe and celebrate it on television, has dissolved. We have seen people…
In a season of 3D movies, a 3D movie magazine
In a season of 3D films, Roopatara, the Kannada film monthly from Manipal Media Network has come out with a 98-page special 3D issue, complete with a free pair of 3D spectacles to view 40 3D photographs of movie stars and movie stills. On the cover is Radhika Kumaraswamy, the actress who no longer makes…
After the full-page report, the full-page ad
Mail Today‘s outstanding political cartoonist, R. Prasad, on the irony of newspapers running advertisements from the controversial truck maker, Tatra, when it is at the heart of a major corruption scandal involving the Indian Army. Among the newspapers which received the full-page ad is The Indian Express, whose controversial full-page report on the coup that…
‘Aman ki Asha’ now bears the whiff of newsprint
First two newspaper groups, The Times of India and Jang joined hands to give peace a chance. Now, Hindustan Times reports that newsprint has stepped into the minefield that is India-Pakistan relations. Jang and The Dawn are buying newsprint from India. Image: courtesy Hindustan Times Also read: Sailing with the doves, supping with the hawks
Adolf Hitler reacts to Indian Express ‘C’ report
Just as the journalistic world was consigning the Indian Express ‘C’ report—the full page, three-deck headline, three-byline story of the coup that wasn’t—to the dustbin of history, the Fuhrer steps in. Also read: Indian Express ‘C’ report: scoop, rehash or spin? Indian Express stands by its ‘C’ report How the media viewed the Indian Express…
Ex-IHT journalist goes missing from Rishikesh
Mail Today, the tabloid newspaper from the India Today group, on Jonathan Spollen, the 28-year-old Irish journalist formerly with the New York Times-owned International Herald Tribune, who has gone missing from Rishikesh. Read the full article: Irish journalist goes missing
‘Newsweek’ prize for South Asian commentary
PRESS RELEASE: The American newsweekly Newsweek and the website The Daily Beast are offering a prize for the best commentary writing in South Asia in partnership with the Open Hands Initiative in order to celebrate and nurture outstanding talent and find fresh voices covering the region. The aim of the prize is to promote and…
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