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 no “house view or line”: its many publications are free to do what they want.
This allows them to evolve, in different ways, with different views, approaches, at different paces, and in response to different challenges and consumer needs.
“To illustrate, if TOI were to be considered the main BCCL publication, many times the Navbharat Times‘ coverage may be opposite of TOI‘s.
“The entire format and design of city-specific local newspapers like Mumbai Mirror will always be different from that of TOI‘s, TOI Crest will have a different style of journalism to TOI‘s and NBT is sometimes found to be running editorials with a headline that proudly proclaims “TOI ke virudh“!
“In fact, much to the consternation of many, Times Now anchors are seen fulminating against Pakistan, sometimes on the same day as TOI carries the Aman ki Asha campaign! Essentially, then, all newspapers within the group have the freedom to have entirely opposing viewpoints — unparalleled pluralism — on the same topic.”
Read the full article: Federalism: the BCCL bedrock
IJR 
During the heady days when TimesMediaNet.Com was alive, things were different !
Times Medianet had declared to its prospective clients ( mainly PR agencies and advertising and marketing professionals) that “our web-based services will get complete support from our print publications like The Times of India and The Economic Times, our TV news channel (Times Now) and the advertising and event management divisions of The Times of India group. Our editors would always be looking at Timesmedianet.com to see what’s newsworthy. Great news made here finds its way from the web to TV screens and print broadsheets.”
Private Treaties are no more. Those 100-odd companies were buying from Times Group, some form of protective umbrella , http://fraudsofindia.blogspot.com/2009/04/indian-media-scam-private-treaties.html , surely to be missed by those protected.
They saved customers business from ruin and expose, according to The Hoot: http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=3174&pg=1&mod=1§ionId=4
They were never stingy with praise to their treaty partners. Alas Private Treaties are dead forever.
For vendors of exquisite writing materials (such as ballpoint pens) it would have been a setback… Unless you believe what UK’s Greenslade in 2011 found out, that all is not lost:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/feb/20/press-freedom-india
Hi
Your posts are very interesting and informative, but why are you hung up with the Times of India?…most of your posts are Times based….is there any particular reason?
The explanation offered by BCCL is fine but Sans Serif, given its normal penchant for questioning should be asking : Is one arm of BCCL, say Times Now, permitted to question biased reporting and/or paid news on the part of TOI?