A foreign correspondent is an exotic bird quickly going extinct. Once upon a time, newspapers had correspondents in many of the world’s news hotspots: Washington and London certainly but also Islamabad and Colombo, Dubai and Dhaka. Paris, Brussels, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Johannesburg, Sao Paolo have all seen an Indian presence at one time or the…
Category Archives: People
With 25 letters in his name, the new Editor of ‘Mint’ gives an old warhorse some competition, but in vain
The business newspaper Mint has a new Editor: Sruthijith K.K.. The former Media Nama, Huff Post, Economic Times journalist replaces Vinay Kamat at the helm. The new Editor’s full Aadhaar-PAN Card-passport name appears in the paper’s imprintline today, just as Vinay’s did as Vaman Vassudev Kamat. At 25 letters, “Sruthijith Kurupichankandy” is arguably the longest…
Bhanu Athaiya became India’s first Oscar winner for ‘Gandhi’. But she also did lots of fashion sketches for ‘Eve’s Weekly’.
Bhanu Athaiya, the costume designer who dressed up everybody from Mumtaz to the Mahatma on screen and won an Academy Award for Gandhi, also did plenty of sketches for the now-defunct women’s magazine Eve’s Weekly. Sixty-one of her journalistic artworks, mostly fashion sketches adorning the magazine’s pages, are now being auctioned in three lots by…
‘Marmik’, the magazine that launched a political party turns 60, and the lines are clear in India’s first family of cartoonists: the Thackerays
Marmik, the Marathi illustrated weekly that was the springboard for cartoonist Bal Thackeray‘s political launch, is celebrating its diamond jubilee with a 64-page special issue carrying tributes from a host of contemporary cartoonists. The weekly, christened by Bal Thackeray’s father Prabodhankar, was launched in 1960 shortly after Thackeray Jr had left the Free Press Journal…
India’s most successful multimedia journalist, with a humongous output across platforms, is dead at 62. But why didn’t you know of Ravi Belagere before?
The great West Indian writer C.L.R. James famously wrote: “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?” In other words, there is a lot more to the game than just the game. The question can be rephrased in journalism: “What do they know of journalism who only English and Hindi journalism know?” ***…
After ‘Scam 1992’: How Harshad Mehta tried to place a column in ‘The Times of India’, where Sucheta Dalal had exposed his swindle
The 1992 stock market swindle starring Harshad Mehta broken by the journalist Sucheta Dalal is now a “major motion picture” thanks to the web series Scam 1992 directed by Hansal Mehta. Unbelievable as it may seem today, Sucheta’s investigation appeared in The Times of India, in an all-too-brief brush with investigative journalism for India’s largest…
In a sea of conformist editorials, ‘Hindustan Times’ takes the cake and the bakery on Arnab Goswami’s arrest
Newspaper editorials on Republic TV founder and editor Arnab Goswami‘s arrest for allegedly abetting the suicide of an unpaid studio designer all take the same line: that no matter what the facts of the case, the arrest of a pesky needler is wrong. *** Hindustan Times *** The Indian Express *** The Times of India…
How many Pulitzer Prize winners can the ‘New York Times’ assemble to say ‘goodbye and thank you’ to a much-loved office manager in Delhi? Three.
It is possible to spend your entire working life in The Times of India and not even get a para in the paper upon your passing, unless you are a Subhash Kirpekar, Arindam Sen Gupta or somebody of like stature and utility. Meanwhile, The New York Times doffs its hat to Parambaloth Joseph Anthony or…
J-POD || Podcast || “Because of COVID very few journalists are on the ground, very few are travelling, very few are interacting the way they would. Take everything with a pinch of salt”|| Bihar veteran Uttam Sengupta
https://soundcloud.com/user-311470525/uttam-sengupta Generally speaking, political analysis on Indian television has been as reliable as the weather report and as insightful as astrological predictions—but just a little less fun than the comic strip. The assembly elections in Bihar five Novembers years ago showed what a joke it was. Even on the day of the counting, even as…
How a speech of Anita Pratap glorifying V. Prabhakaran ended up in ‘Methagu’, a biopic on the dreaded LTTE chief
Anita Pratap, the Bangalore University journalism student whose byline—when bylines still had value—adorned Sunday and India Today magazines, Time and CNN, is in the news. Pratap, reputedly the first journalist to interview Velupillai Prabhakaran, when he lived in Chennai in 1985, features in Methagu (His Excellency), a biopic on the slain supremo of the Liberation…
Believe it if you must, Subhash Chandra of Zee says he is now personally worth just Rs 9.85 crore
How the cookie crumbles. In 2018, Zee group founder Subhash Chandra was India’s 27th richest man, his net worth valued at around Rs 35,000 crore. Business Standard reports that he now puts the value of his personal assets at Rs 9.85 crore, down from Rs 39.07 crore in 2015, as the group faces a mountain…
Seema Mustafa elected president of the Editors Guild of India; Sanjay Kapoor is general secretary
Seema Mustafa, the founder and editor of the website The Citizen, has been elected as the new president of the Editors Guild of India for a one-year term. Mustafa defeated M.D. Nalapat of The Sunday Guardian, 87-51, in the first ever election of the Guild’s officebearers, held via Zoom, on Friday. Previously, the Guild has…
How a London tabloid reporter’s interview paved the way for Argentina’s president to be India’s Republic Day guest after the Falklands War
Peregrine Worsthorne, the former Editor of The Sunday Telegraph, London, passed away recently. In The Telegraph, Calcutta, the paper’s fantastic London correspondent Amit Roy remembers this lovely anecdote of Worsthorne. “Another charming and eloquent editor of my acquaintance, Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, who was briefly editor of The Sunday Telegraph, has been in the news. “Perry”, whose…
‘Time and Tide’ waits for no man: after 157 Tests, Kishore Bhimani ties up his next assignment, 22 days after Dean Jones
Kishore Bhimani, the voice that relayed to the world that a Test had been tied in Madras, with the scores level of both the teams with all wickets down, only for the second time in cricket history, has passed on—just 22 days after the demise of the Australian star of that match, Dean Jones. “It’s…
Mr Justice Arnab Goswami, the dispenser of instant judgments at 9 pm, gets a taste of his own medicine in TRP scam in the morning papers
Arnab Goswami‘s Republic TV has only been named in a Bombay Police FIR for allegedly rigging TV meters for ratings, but looking at the headlines in newspapers, it would appear it has already been held guilty in the court of public opinion. A not-unfamiliar experience for the 9 pm judge, jury and executioner. *** ***
‘Mr KN’, a legend at ‘The Hindu’: a “Dronacharya who moulded a generation of Ekalavyas”, an elder brother who helped faraway correspondents scale new heights
Journalism is more than just bold-face owners and editors, whose face appears on TV or who advertise their greatness on social media every few minutes. There are many unsung heroes down the food chain, quietly going about their job with dignity and dedication. The Hindu lost two former news editors on the recently. Here, Mathihalli…
When a journalist gets an honorary doctorate it’s news: ‘Mint’ ex-editor Raju Narisetti is now Dr Raju Narisetti thanks to the publishers of ‘The Economic Times’
Raju Narisetti, the Times School of Journalism alumnus who was founder-editor of the business newspaper Mint, has been conferred an honorary doctorate by Bennett University set up by The Times of India group. Narisetti, currently Publisher at McKinsey & Company’s Global Publishing, was conferred the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Honoris Causa) in Media Management…
‘KN’, a long-standing News Editor of ‘The Hindu’, and his successor ‘GD’ both pass away on the same day. And the encomiums are a reminder of journalism as it once was.
K. Narayanan, the former news editor and later readers’ editor of The Hindu, has passed on, at age 88. And so has the man who succeeded him at the post: Gomatam Dwarakanath, at age 86. Both on the same day, 29 September 2020. The Narayanan obit highlights his penchant for hard work, integrity, wide knowledge,…
Indian media is in such fine fettle that the death of the great ‘Sunday Times’ editor Sir Harold Evans is just a routine affair
To no one’s surprise, the passing of Sir Harold Evans, the legendary Editor of The Times, London, received less-than-enthusiastic coverage in English newspapers in India, most of which were happy to run a dry Reuters or AP obituary on the foreign page. Only The Telegraph, Calcutta, in whose design in 1982 Sir Harry is rumoured…
Except ‘The Hindu’ and ‘The Telegraph’, most newspapers can’t join the dots between arrested journalist Rajeev Sharma and NSA Ajit Doval
The arrest of Delhi-based journalist Rajeev Sharma, for violating the Official Secrets Act (OSA) by allegedly passing on “defence secrets” to China, is remarkable for the consistent quality of stenography. Only The Hindu (above) categorically reports Sharma’s association with the right-wing thinktank Vivekananda International Foundation, whose founder-director was the national security adviser, Ajit Doval. ***…
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