In an opinion piece in The Times of India, the academic and international affairs analyst Kanti Bajpai says an India under Narendra Modi will be marked by “soft-fascism—a society marked by slightly less extreme levels fo authoritarinism, intimidation, chauvinism, submission and social Darwinism as classical fascism—and he includes the media as being among the four…
Monthly Archives: March 2014
When a newspaper Editor looked like a hippie
Mainstream Indian (print) editors today are usually at their nattiest best, wearing carefully chosen Fab India kurtas if not designer clothes, trendy watches and slick spectacles, with not a strand out of place on their mane. But there was a time, in 1971, when editors looked like Makarand Deshpande. Guess who this newspaper editor is?
When your paper has six mastheads, it’s news
It isn’t everyday that the front page of your newspaper also sports the mastheads of other newspapers, but this is how the front-page of the Hindustan Times looks today, as it announces an advertising tieup with the Ananda Bazaar Patrika group in Calcutta and the Hindu group in Madras. A bunch of advertisers—Amul, Britannia, Fortune…
‘Modi Wave’ can also touch a CPI(M) newspaper
From Buzzword, the gossip column of The Sunday Guardian: The Communists in Kerala were left red-faced when the CPI(M) newspaper Deshabhimani carried a full page advertisement by Narendra Modi‘s Gujarat government. The advertisement, highlighting Gujarat’s Mahatma Gandhi Swachchata Mission, features a huge Modi portrait. When taken to task, the newspaper management defended their act by…
The Khushwant Singh “pre-obituary” from 1983
Khushwant Singh, the self-proclaimed “dirty old man of Indian journalism”, has passed away at his home in New Delhi, at the age of 99. Exactly, 30 years ago, when Singh was 69, the journalist Dhiren Bhagat wrote a pre-obituary of the “sardar in the light bulb” for the now-defunct Sunday Observer. Ironically, Dhiren Bhagat was…
Question: India’s best political reporting is in…?
Although India’s best and biggest corporate scams—from Satyam to Sahara and everything else in between—routinely escape the business papers and business magazines and business channels, for quite a while, the best political reporting has come from The Economic Times. And The Times group is losing no opportunity to drum home the message, even as it…
You have read the column, now read the book
When he began a new column titled “First person, Second draft” in September 2013, Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta acknowledged that the Hindi film Madras Cafe, directed by Shoojit Sircar, on the hunt for the killers of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, was somewhat of an inspiration. Gupta wrote in the inaugural issue of the…
How Amitabh Bachchan ‘saved’ an AFP journo
SUDHEENDRA KULKARNI writes: “Hi Sudheen, how are you?” the caller on my mobile phone asked me the day after I landed in Cairo last month. It was an Indian voice, also somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t quite connect the voice with the name. It was Jay Deshmukh, a colleague with whom I had worked together…
Operation Rajnikant: starring Samir & Vineet Jain
There are 12 media personalities in the Indian Express list of the most powerful Indians in 2014—“ie 100″—for 2014, but 10 of them are proprietors, only one is a journalist and the other is a former journalist. As usual, the most interesting part of the prospective list are the factoids accompanying the profiles. # 19,…
The quasquicentennial of ‘Malayala Manorama’
Malayala Manorama, once India’s largest selling newspaper before being overtaken by Dainik Jagran and The Times of India, has just completed the valedictory of its quasquicentennial celebrations. Above is the first issue of the paper, which began as a weekly, published on March 22, 1888. Below is the March 13, 2014 issue, which captures prime…
TV9 reporters ‘stung’ by their own operation
Two reporters of the 24×7 Kannada news channel TV9 have landed in jail after being arrested by Bangalore police following a “sting” operation in which they were reportedly trying to entrap a powerful and controversial Congress minister by offering him a bribe with secret cameras, went awry. Deccan Herald reports that the police are also…
In new law mag, Sunanda Pushkar post-death pix
There’s a new magazine on your news stand: India Legal. The 84-page magazine, priced at Rs 100, and edited by former India Today executive editor Inderjit Badhwar is published out of Delhi. Writes Badhwar in the editorial of the launch issue: “The thrust of our magazine—as should be the endeavour of all competent news journalism—is…
In Ernakulam, this is Anita Pratap reporting for…
Former Tehelka, India Today and Headlines Today journalist Ashish Khetan is to be the Aam Aadmi Party’s candidate from the New Delhi constituency, continuing the fledgling party’s strange infatuation with journalists. But from deep south, there is news that AAP may field a blast from the past, Anita Pratap. The former Time, CNN, Indian Express,…
The media Marwari who’s a ‘proper Tam-Brahm’
After a long period away from the arclights, Viveck Goenka, the scion of one of India’s most influential newspapers, The Indian Express, is slowly bouncing into the main frame. He is now playing an increasingly hand’s-on role at his own paper, making key decisions; is seen at media events, is making his presence felt on…
The investigative TV journo who now sells sarees
The state of mainstream Indian journalism, it can be argued, is somewhat reflected by the number of journalists churning out books; leaving for greener PR, corporate communications and “policy”) pastures; joining thinktanks; going on sabatticals, etc—and it is probably no different from the rest of the world. But nobody drives home the issue better than…
IJR 