In Lounge, the weekend section of the business paper Mint, the columnist Aakar Patel doffs his hat to Prakash Belawadi, the Bangalore engineer who became an Indian Express reporter, who became a magazine correspondent, who became a television chat show host, who launched a journalism school, who launched a weekly newspaper… Who made a national-award…
Monthly Archives: August 2013
Are government ads distorting media freedom?
Swapan Dasgupta in The Telegraph, Calcutta: “The national capital boasts a multitude of daily newspapers in different languages. On my part, I subscribe to seven dailies and one is delivered to me free of charge. This Wednesday, which happened to be a public holiday on account of Janmashtami, I perused all eight of these Delhi…
Sex, godman & a very hard product placement
Long years ago, when the divide between church and state was better protected in journalism and the business side had no inkling what was happening on the other side, the editors at Time magazine ran an interview with Mother Teresa with the quote-headline, “I’m just a pencil in the hand of god.” When the issue…
From: Viveck Goenka. To: Express employees
The following is the full text of the email sent by Indian Express chairman Viveck Goenka, announcing the re-entry of George Varghese into the group as CEO, after editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta relinquished his managerial responsibilities with effect from Krishna Janmashtami: *** Dear All, You must have all read Shekhar’s mail of 26th August. I have…
Where was Priyanka Chopra going with Bob?*
There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip in the era of fast-breaking news and even well-equipped organisations like CNN and BBC are not immune from howlers in the “supers”. On Tuesday, when the Congress president Sonia Gandhi was rushed to hospital, look who was momentarily accompanying her son-in-law Robert Vadra to look…
‘Media ignores rural rapes, downplays misogyny’
The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)’s mouthpiece ML Update has an editorial on the gangrape of a young photojournalist in Bombay and the street protests in its aftermath. According to the Indian Express, ML Update claims the existence of double standards in the media in the treatment of rape, depending on the power and clout…
How seven cartoonists drew one TOI cartoon
As part of its dodransbicentennial celebrations, The Times of India has published “a cavalcade of cartoons over 175 years”. Titled “Jest in Time“, it is put together by Ajit Ninan, Neelabh Banerjee and Jug Suraiya. At its launch in New Delhi on Monday, seven well-known cartoonists—Sudhir Tailang from Deccan Chronicle, Manjul from Daily News and…
Shekhar Gupta gives up charge as Express CEO
Below is the full text of the “global” email shot off by Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta on Monday, August 26, in which he formally announces his decision to relinquish his managerial functions at the newspaper group. *** Dear All, Looking at the flurry of communication from me over the past few weeks, mainly on…
How journalism helped a cartoonist as author
Author and playwright Manjula Padmanabhan, who created Suki, a female cartoon character for the now-defunct Sunday Observer, has a new book out, Three Virgins and Other Stories. In an interview in Mint, she is asked: What effect has your life as a journalist had on your fiction? My early training to be a journalist powerfully…
If the Press Trust of India (PTI) had a newspaper
All manner of media enterprises take flight in the run-up to an election and this, here, is the front page of volume 1, issue 1 of Dynamic Times, “India’s national weekly newspaper” as its tagline affirms. All 132 stories in the 24-page broadsheet published from New Delhi are sourced from the news agency Press Trust…
‘Licensing journos: recipe for total state control’
The following is the full text of the statement issued by N. Ravi, president of the Editors’ Guild of India, on the proposal mooted by minister of state for information and broadcasting, Manish Tewari, on a “common examination” for student-journalists and a “licence” for journalists to perform their function: “The suggestion of the Union minister…
A “licence” for journalists is not a ‘sine qua non’
Information and broadcasting minister Manish Tewari‘s proposal for a “common examination” for journalism students, with a “licence” to practice journalism at the end, gets the full treatment (a pocket cartoon and an editorial) from the Indian Express: “There are enough closed societies where Tewari’s suggestion would appear commonplace, where governments are unconcerned by the dilemmas…
POLL: Common exam, licences for journalists?
As if the “idiots” in the media didn’t have enough problems to deal with—paid news, corruption, wage board, 12-minute-per-hour ad caps, cross-media controls, job losses, recession etc—the Union information and broadcasting minister Manish Tewari has now floated the kite of a “common examination” for journalists as a precursor to giving them “licenses” to operate, a…
What journalism students ought to become
A piece of advice for journalism students from the former deputy comptroller and auditor general of India, Harprasad Das, as heard by an intrepid reporter of the Orissa-based newspaper, Political and Business Daily: “Media students should become performers because performance justifies performance. What they speak is not their performance, rather what they perform is their…
78-year-old man tops MA journalism course
A 78-year-old masters degree holder in mathematics, Sanskrit, Vaishnavism, and a doctorate in Sanskrit, has secured the first rank in MA journalism and communication at Madras University. But can even Dr T.D. Krishnamachari, with four masters degrees and a PhD, hope to get a job in these bleak, depressing times when journalists, cameramen and technicians…
‘Media irresponsible in Kishtwar coverage’
The incidents in Kishtwar in Jammu & Kashmir on the eve of Id, the culmination of the holy month of Ramza, leading upto Independence Day, occupied plenty of media attention, as the BJP smelt political capital ahead of general elections. The State’s chief minister Omar Abdullah sparred with the leader of the opposition in the…
The 5 stereotypes of journalists in Bollywood
Much as the role of the hero and the heroine has morphed in the Hindi film industry, so has the depiction of the villain and the vamp—and, of course, the journalist. From a pure print person till well into the late 1980s, the journalist on film is now largely a TV person. From a poorly…
A new paper in India’s most crowded market
With the South-based New Indian Express group of Manoj Kumar Sonthalia entering the Delhi market with the Sunday Standard, the North-based Indian Express group of Viveck Goenka has returned the favour by entering the Bangalore market with the National Standard. The 20-page daily, priced at Rs 4, has been launched on Independence Day with a…
Guess who’s looking forward to the I-day holiday?
They also serve who drive and deliver. The “Press” stickers and identification tags in the car of Manoj Kumar, a newspaper vendor in New Delhi’s Meher Chand market. Kumar, 28, who delivers newspapers to embassies and consulates in the capital, says he has seen a near ten-fold increase in the quantum of newspapers sold and…
WaPo, Amazon, HT, and the Reliance-TV18 deal
There was plenty of buzz about the Washington Post building being sold to shore up the books. But when the paper’s staff was convened for a meeting on the afternoon of August 5, they were in for a shock: the family-owned newspaper itself was being sold. The sale, to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com,…
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