On its edit page today, The Times of India has provided an extraordinary explication of the guiding philosophy behind the various newspapers, radio and TV stations that are part of the Times group: federalism. Authored by Kaushik Murali and Saubhik Chakrabarti, the 926-word piece says this federalism means Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL) has…
Monthly Archives: May 2013
The capital ‘I’ returns to The Times of India
The capital ‘I’ doesn’t appear on the pages of The Times of India, not on the edit page, not on the commentary page. That’s one way of keeping commentators from preening in the first-person. And that’s by order from the very top. But as the paper turns 175 and launches the ‘I Lead India‘ campaign…
Sudheendra Kulkarni ends his ‘Express’ column
Sudheendra Kulkarni, the former left-leaning Sunday Observer and Blitz journalist who became a close aide of former prime minister A.B. Vajpayee and BJP president L.K. Advani, has ended his column in The Indian Express. Kulkarni, who was jailed for his alleged role in the cash-for-votes scandal and wrote a book on Mahatma Gandhi and the…
12 gems from a response to a TOI legal notice
There’s something decidedly execrable when a media company thinks it is well within its rights to use its might to silence another media company or media professional with a fire-and-brimstone legal threat. Even more so, when a 175-year-old media giant like The Times of India group picks on a 22-year-old girl. In April, lawyers representing…
How Sarojini Naidu’s son helped launch a paper
The Times of India has turned 175; its rival in Hyderabad, Deccan Chronicle, has turned 75. Despite the travails the publicly listed company is publicly going through, Andhra Pradesh’s No.1 English daily has kicked off its 75th anniversary celebrations through 75 artists who have joined hands to pay tribute to the spirit of Hyderabad with…
‘Regional TV better than English news channels’
Malvika Singh, the publisher of Seminar magazine, in The Telegraph, Calcutta: “A pathetic scam that is plaguing the Indian Premier League has been making headlines for days, as though nothing else of any importance is happening in India. The media has been grossly irresponsible in this regard. This has not only made public discourse mediocre,…
They also serve who sort, insert and distribute
In the Bangalore neighbourhood of Ulsoor, newspaper vendors slip pamphlets, flyers and other materials into the Sunday papers before heading off to doo-deliver them. Photograph: M.S. Gopal/ Mumbai Paused Also read: So, how many journos cracked CAT 2012? Every picture tells a tale. Babu‘s tells a tome When Chamundi betta relocates to amchi Mumbai
Now, NewsX says it is the ‘No.1 English channel’
If our TV stations cannot even put out numbers of their viewership which have a faint whiff of credibility, can they real put out news and views that news consumers can trust and believe? NewsX, the news channel which has already seen three sets of owners since its launch, is running crawlers on its screens…
How to pass IAS: read newspapers & magazines
It is not often these days that news consumers have something good to say about newspapers. And magazines. And TV stations. And blogs. And websites. Individual and institutional transgressions—paid news, private treaties, medianet, Radia tapes, shrieking anchors, sensationalism, jingoism, corruption, etc—have all contributed enormously to the cynicism of the media among the consuming classes. How…
Just between You and Me, a ‘Time’ special
What goes around comes around in the world of magazines*. Six years ago, Time magazine hailed you, yes You, as the person of the year: “You control the information age. Welcome to your world.” In circa 2013, it bemoans the “Me, Me, Me” generation addicted to phones, tabs and notebooks: “Millennials are lazy, entitled…
So, how many journalists cracked CAT 2012?
Serving warm, uplifting news first thing in the morning is an integral part of The Times of India‘s sunny credo, a point which comes up over and over in presentations made its managers, and on the pages of the paper. Today, the paper serves it up by the bucketful with the story of N. Shiva…
How a newspaper gave an 11-year-old a future
The newspaper world has found its own Kalawati. On April 25, at a traffic light in Bhopal, Kaushal Shakya, an 11-year-old newspaper boy, had a life-changing experience when his potential buyer turned out to be Rahul Gandhi. Writes Rasheed Kidwai in The Telegraph: “Akhbar kyon bechte ho? (Why are you selling newspapers?) Do you go…
New Yorker carries TOI response, 7 months later
Exactly seven months after The New Yorker carried a nine-page profile of Samir Jain, Vineet Jain and The Times of India by its acclaimed media critic Ken Auletta, the magazine has carried a response from TOI’s executive editor, Arindam Sen Gupta, in its May 5 issue, on medianet, private treaties and other subsidiary issues. Image: courtesy…
How Praja Vani reporters tracked Karnataka poll
On the day politicians count their seats in the Karnataka assembly elections, the 65-year-old Kannada daily newspaper Praja Vani, from the Deccan Herald group, has a page one, colour-coded graphic that chronicles the journeys undertaken by its reporters to bring the poll to its readers. The final score: over 27 days, 10 reporters (including three…
Headlines Today claims it’s overtaken Times Now
In a non-stop season of scams, you would expect television watchers to switch on private TV stations to get the plain, unvarnished truth? Well, think again. Hindustan Times once again reports that the most-watched news shows between 8 pm and 10 pm are those on the state-owned Doordarshan News. The paper reports that the 8…
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