Football-crazy Bengal has easily beaten football-crazy Kerala and football-crazy Goa in its coverage of the passing of Argentinian legend Diego Maradona. The Bengali daily Anandabazar Patrika (above) has a classy front page, and calm and unckuttered inside pages, in contrast to the early editions of Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhumi (below). *** The Goan newspapers are…
Tag Archives: Ananda Bazaar Patrika
When Aveek Sarkar and Vir Sanghvi met a scandal-ridden Rajiv Gandhi in 1988, they could ask 208 questions and supplementaries, including one, ahem, on #NewIndia. That is called an “interview”, Narendra Modi and PMO please note.
*** “In the first year of his prime ministership, Rajiv Gandhi was easily accessible to the press and gave candid, free-wheeling interviews. By the second year the candour was beginning to wear thin. And by the time the scandals surrounding his friends and the regime surfaced, he had retreated into his shell.” Thus begins…
The ‘Sunday’ magazine sub-editor who secretly cooked her way to become the best known Indian chef in the world, after Gaggan Anand (if you believe food critics, that is)
In the Hindustan Times magazine supplement, Brunch, the food writer Vir Sanghvi writes about Asma Khan, the former Sunday magazine journalist whose hashtag could well be #SubKaChaatSubKaVikas. (Sunday, launched by the Ananda Bazaar Patrika group, is now defunct. M.J. Akbar was its first editor.) Writes Sanghvi: “It is a funny feeling when a colleague from decades…
If you read ‘The Times of India’ group’s Bengali daily ‘Ei Samay’ today, would you know that its Editor…?
No news is good news, when a newspaper Editor is finally arrested for his alleged non-journalistic misdemeanours. Suman Chattopadhyay, the well-regarded Editor of the Bengali daily newspaper Ei Samay of The Times of India group, was taken into custody yesterday for his alleged involvement in the chit fund scam. And…. And there is not a…
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…
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 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…
Nude picture that landed Sports World in trouble
The cover image of the now-defunct Sports World magazine, from the Ananda Bazaar Patrika group, which landed the Calcutta-based media house in a protracted 21-year legal case that ended this week. The image of tennis star Boris Becker covering the breasts of his then fiancee Barbara Feltus with his hands, had been reproduced from the…
Will The Telegraph, Calcutta, be around in 2024?
The news of former Bihar chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav being sentenced to five years in jail for the fodder scam under his watch was reported in the same old way by most newspapers which think readers do not have access to radios, TVs, laptops, tablets and mobile phones. Not The Telegraph. The Calcutta newspaper,…
‘Businessworld’ to go fortnightly from weekly
What goes around, comes around. Fourteen years after it went weekly, India’s second oldest business magazine, Businessworld from the Anand Bazaar Patrika group, is reverting to a fortnightly. In a note to readers in the last issue of its weekly avatar, editor Prosenjit Datta explains why: In 1999, when we had turned weekly, there was a…
‘Every big story in last 3 years broken by TOI’
The front-page of the launch edition of Ei Samay, the new Bengali newspaper launched by The Times of India group, in Calcutta, on Mahalaya, the first day of Dasara 2012. The first day’s issue comprises a 32-page main broadsheet section, a 32-page supplement, and an 8-page tabloid section titled O Samay. The main section has…
Buy our paper, get a Harley-Davidson: Free!
It’s raining gifts in the Bengali newspaper wars. And gone is the age of free flasks, timepieces and tee-shirts to woo subscribers. Ei Bela (the moment), the soon-to-be-launched tabloid from the Ananda Bazaar Patrika group (which also owns The Telegraph and ABP News) to counter The Times of India group’s morning broadsheet Ei Samay (Times…
Times, Telegraph and the Bengali paper wars
A newspaper war is looming in Calcutta as The Times of India group prepares to launch a Bengali broadsheet, Ei Samay (literally, Times Now) ahead of the Puja season. Market leader Ananda Bazaar Patrika (ABP) has announced the launch of the tabloid Ei bela (literally, this moment) to protect the mothership. Saturday’s Telegraph carries a…
Kuldip Nayar on Shekhar Gupta, N. Ram & Co
Kuldip Nayar, 89, the grand old lion of Indian journalism—former editor of the Statesman in Delhi, former managing editor of the United News of India news agency, former correspondent of the London Times, former media advisor to the late prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, former high commissioner of India to the United Kingdom, and above…
N. Ram, Arnab Goswami crash out of power list
Despite stitching up one of the biggest media deals in recent times, TV18’s Raghav Bahl is among four  media persons who have crashed out of the Indian Express list of the 100 most powerful people in the year of the lord 2012. N. Ram, the former editor-in-chief of The Hindu (No. 73 in last year’s list)…
‘Business journos deserve credit for reforms’
India’s second oldest business magazine, BusinessWorld, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month. A special issue to mark the occasion features all the  editors of the fortnightly turned weekly magazine from the Ananda Bazaar Patrika (ABP) stable talking about their respective tenures: Dilip Thakore (now editor, Education World): I served as editor of BusinessWorld for seven years…
Tamil paper prints phone numbers of N-protestors
In April 2010, the Bengali television news channel Star Ananda of the Ananda Bazaar Patrika group ran into trouble with the soon-to-be chief minister of the State, Mamata Banerjee, for “continously flashing” her mobile phone number after a railway accident. Thousands of miles away, the Tamil newspaper Dinamalar, is making news for nearly similar but…
Tiger Pataudi’s parting shot for the media
A day after the passing of Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, The Telegraph has reprinted a 1995 interview with the former cricket captain, who also did a stint as editor of Sportsworld, the now-defunct magazine from the Ananda Bazaar Patrika group that owns The Telegraph. The interviewer is Salman Khurshid, the current Union law minister, whose…
Why doesn’t INS oppose ‘no-poaching’ pacts?
The Indian Newspaper Society (INS) has branded the recommendations of the Majithia wage board as an attempt to muzzle the freedom of the press. But why does its heart beat for media freedom when competing newspapers enter no-poaching agreements which curtails the freedom of journalists? That is the question that Yogesh Pawar asks. Pawar, a…
Should papers implement Majithia wage board?
Notwithstanding the exponential growth of the print media post-liberalisation, it is clear that the voice of journalists in the publications they bring out is subservient to that of the proprietor, promoter and publisher on most issues and certainly so on the Majithia wage board for journalists and “other newspaper employees”. Although owners and managers have…
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