Sunita Narain‘s Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the publishers of Down to Earth among other magazines, is looking for an art director.
Monthly Archives: January 2013
Free speech gets a major boost (in the a**)
So, young Indians cannot tell their friends in what they like on Facebook, without being “pre-screened” by Harvard types (or hauled into a police station by Shiv Sena goons). So, bloggers cannot publish their “online private diaries” without the sword of 66(A) hanging over their heads. So, tweeters can be blocked and Savita bhabhi‘s enviable…
‘Arnab Goswami is corrective to babalog media’
Bangalore, the home of City Tab, India’s original weekly tabloid, now has a new weekly: Talk. Edited by former Indian Express and Yahoo! staffer S.R. Ramakrishna, Talk also features a weekly satire page called Ayyotoons, illustrated by Satish Acharya. The latest issue features Times Now* editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami. *** At the turn of 2012, the…
Mohun Bagan fracas claims ‘Pratidin’ editor?
Nora Chopra writes in The Sunday Guardian: A major fight has broken out among some Trinamool Congress leaders. Mamata Banerjee‘s blue-eyed boy, Rajya Sabha member Kunal Ghosh was thrown out of the office of Pratidin newspaper by its staffers last week. Ghosh, who used to be the deputy editor of Pratidin, was told that his…
Arvind Kejriwal taunts Ambani on TV ‘sue’ threat
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: Last month, India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, and its most powerful business house, Reliance Industries, shot off a seven-page legal notice to several TV news channels for airing anti-corruption activist Arvind Kejriwal‘s allegations against them in October and November last year. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, neither Kejriwal nor his advocate-partner,…
EPW tears into TV’s ‘hawks, hotheads, hysteria’
The Economic & Political Weekly has an editorial in its January 26 issue on the dangerous role played by Indian TV channels when the news of the beheading of an Indian soldier on the border came in two weeks ago. “Television news,” says EPW, “is fast becoming the most dangerous extremist in India’s civil society.…
How promoters killed the TV news reporter
Sandeep Bhushan, a former reporter with NDTV and Headlines Today and now a journalism educator at the Jamia Milia, on the implications of the growing intervention of owners/promoters in determining news content in TV broadcast news networks, in The Hindu: “The most far-reaching is the redefinition of the role of the editor. Increasingly his/her profile…
What to do when a rival hijacks your story
How should a newspaper which has been pursuing a scandal for over a decade react when a rival journalist scoops a confessional interview with the personality at the centre of the story? Or looks likely to lob softball questions? If you are Rupert Murdoch, you advice the interloper. Oprah Winfrey‘s interview with cycling champ turned…
Is news TV becoming a ‘national security hazard’?
Editorial in Business Standard: “It should go without saying that the media has a role in informing and educating a citizenry about the issues of the day, providing background, context and holding the powerful to account. A case study in how not to go about this is currently being provided by the electronic media in…
‘Media’s mandate is to also chronicle good news’
Business Today, the business magazine from the India Today group, is celebrating its 21st anniversary with a special issue that lists “66 reasons to keep faith in India”. On the back page, editor Chaitanya Kalbag writes: Shine on, you crazy diamonds “I remember back in the 1970s, when a new India was just over a…
New health cards for PIB accreditated journos
Good news for journalists with bad hearts, lungs and kidneys, from the gossip columns of the Sunday papers. From The Telegraph diary: Manmohan Singh has decided to extend a helping hand to journalists. The Centre has accepted a long-standing demand by scribes that new health cards be issued to accreditated journalsits. These health cards will…
Poems on News Anchors: this week, Karan Thapar
In the latest issue of Open magazine, Madhavankutty Pillai continues his series of poems on news anchors. This time, the TV anchor Karan Thapar gets his attention: O, obstreperous weasel Unregenerate blight Cowering from the shock Of my hair’s white Prise your eyes From my neon necktie Prepare your deceits Get ready to fight …
Mukesh Ambani ‘sues’ TV channels on Kejriwal
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, and India’s most powerful business house, Reliance Industries, are believed to have served a legal notice on several TV news channels for airing anti-corruption activist Arvind Kejriwal‘s allegations against them in October and November last year. However, it is not known if Kejriwal, a former…
Indian Express 2-month course in photography
Everybody loves writing about Pankaj Pachauri
It is not often that the same piece of political gossip appears in three different newspapers in two different cities on more or less the same day. But in the snakepit of power that is the nation’s capital, it is all in a day’s work, especially if concerns the media advisor to the prime minister,…
Vir Sanghvi clarifies on Caravan profile of Arnab
In its new avatar, Caravan magazine doesn’t have space for letters to the editor. But in the January 2013 issue, the contributors’ page contains a response from Vir Sanghvi, the former editor of Hindustan Times, on the profile of Times Now editor-in-chief Arnab Gowsami in the last issue of 2012. An error seems to have…
Workshop for journos on national security issues
PRESS RELEASE: The Madras-based Press Institute of India (PII) is conducting a two-day workshop for journalists on reporting national security issues. To be held in conjunction with the Bangalore-based institute of contemporary studies, the workshop will be held at the Christ University in Bangalore on January 30 and 31. The registration fee is Rs 3,500.
Why media shouldn’t name Delhi rape victim
The British newspaper Sunday People has outed the name of the Delhi gangrape victim, but the Indian media has not fallen for the bait—yet—although it has been trending on Twitter. Here Rajeev Gowda, chairman of the centre for public policy at the Indian institute of management (IIM), Bangalore, argues why it is best not to…
Applications invited for Community Radio stations
The information and broadcasting ministry is inviting applications from NGOs and non-for-profit organisations for the setting up of community radio stations. Visit the website: Community Radio Stations
A whistle blower policy at ‘The Hindu’
The Madras daily, The Hindu, and its sister-business paper, Business Line, have put in place a whistle blower policy, effective 1 January 2013:
IJR 