News of a wedding that brings India’s most powerful corporate, Reliance Industries, closer to India’s second largest English newspaper, Hindustan Times, which is headed by the Congress member of Parliament Shobhana Bhartia. From Mail Today, the tabloid newspaper from the India Today group: Mukesh Ambani‘s home Antilia has seen a number of parties in the…
Monthly Archives: December 2012
I&B ministry “advisory” on TV protest coverage
In the cold war era, it used to be said that the first target of wannabe-dictators was government-controlled radio stations—take control of it and you control the message going out. In the post-liberalised era, the first target of the government seems to be private television stations. Below is the full text of the “advisory” issued…
The cover of the ‘last print issue’ of ‘Newsweek’
Newsweek, the iconic American newsweekly, has just published its final dead-tree issue with a hashtag on the cover indicating the digital direction it it heading towards. Seventy-nine years in print, the magazine published 4,150 issues, saw 11 logo redesigns and had 17 editors at the helm, including the Indian-born Fareed Zakaria. Also read: Second editor…
Why India Today had to shut Gujarati edition
Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta in his jottings on the Gujarat elections: “Narendra Modi and Gujarat defy simpler generalisations. Such as the idea that communalism in Gujarat rose with the arrival of Modi, and before that it was a state of perfect secular tolerance. “If the BJP hasn’t lost power ever since it first seized…
Africa-watcher Hari Sharan Chhabra is no more
On the pages of The Times of India in Delhi, the grim news of the passing of an Indian who looked at a part of the world most of the media doesn’t: Hari Sharan Chhabra, editor of Africa Diary and World Focus and a frequent contributor to the Economic & Political Weekly (EPW). Chhabra’s elder…
The man who hasn’t read a newspaper for 5 years
Nikhil Pahwa, the editor and publisher of the media website Media Nama, is among the “37 Indians of tomorrow” in India Today magazine’s 37th anniversary issue. The 29-year-old digital journalist paints a scary picture of the future for dead-tree media professionals who still latch on to the innocent belief that their word is gospel. “The…
Finally, some good news on the media—in Urdu
At a time when the Indian media in general and the English media in particular is suffering from a “trust deficit” with audiences and readers—and when urging them to “consume” is the order of the day—Seema Chisthi of the Indian Express reports on a sterling effort from the Urdu language papers of Hyderabad. The editors…
Why Aditya Sinha suddenly exited from DNA
Aditya Sinha, the editor-in-chief of the Bombay newspaper DNA has resigned, within weeks of former Times of India response chief Bhaskar Das joining the Zee group, which now wholly owns the paper. (Sinha’s departure had been preceded by the exit of K.U Rao, the long-serving publisher of DNA.) Coming at a time when the Zee…
The many faces of Aakar Patel (as per Google)
Google now has a search facility by which you can look up images of people by putting in an image in the search window. This is what turns up when you look for Aakar Patel, at various times the executive editor of Mid-Day, columnist for Mint Lounge, Hindustan Times, Express Tribune, First Post and Open,…
Asianet journos, editors must declare assets
On the day the Indian Express in New Delhi has exposed how the “paid news” rot runs deep in BJP-ruled Chhattisgarh, Rajeev Chandrasekhar‘s Asianet News Network (ANN) has announced steps “to restore confidence in media” and urged all other media companies to follow suit: *** PRESS RELEASE: In the current backdrop of some cases and…
A newspaper for the other 72 per cent of India
“India’s rural newspaper”, Gaon Connection, has rolled out. The 14-page weekly broadsheet was launched by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav in Itaunja, a village near Lucknow, on Sunday. “72 per cent Indians live in villages but do the villages receive 72 per cent of government funds? This newspaper will speak on such issues and…
Prabhu Chawla, Pritish Nandy & Modi 87:13
Narendra Modi‘s detractors (and drumbeaters) went into overdrive recently when The Times of India reported that 46% of the Gujarat chief minister’s one million Twitter followers were “fake”, 41% were “inactive”, and only 13% were “good”. TOI used a newly launched internet website to check fakers on Twitter to arrive at the numbers. Status People…
IJR 