Nine months after the pandemic broke the back of the media, the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) has revived its demand for a “stimulus package”. It includes: # Removal of 5% customs duty on newsprint # A two-year tax holiday # 200% increase in government spend on print media # 50% increase in rates of government…
Tag Archives: Indian Newspaper Society
J-POD || Podcast || “Commission is down by two-thirds. Some readers look at us like untouchables. The show will go on for just a couple of years” || A paper vendor in Mysore has a message for India’s paper tigers (and INS)
https://soundcloud.com/user-311470525/j-pod-from-uday-to-vineet-a *** In Aesop’s Fables, one of the stories that everybody relates to is the one about the boy who cried wolf. It’s No. 210 in the Perry Index of Greek and Latin fables: the morality tale of a young boy who shouts “wolf, wolf” while grazing his sheep. Villagers who are near by rush to his…
J-POD || Podcast || “No substitute for credible journalism. Media has to cut costs, get into new areas. Journalists need to be multi-skilled in new era” || ex-INS president and ‘Malayala Manorama’ director Jayant Mammen Mathew
https://soundcloud.com/user-311470525/j-pod-ex-ins-president-and *** Battle-weary journalists, who have been there, done that and seen it all, think they know exactly how the media houses which employ them should deal with the existential threat posed by the #Coronavirus pandemic. You could call this the sentimental view, the belief that, at this inflection point for the media business, the…
Everybody in the media loves a good sop from the government in the time of #Coronavirus. (Sorry about exhorting the State to let “market forces” do their job in happier times.)
Since its publication in 1996, the title of the journalist P.Sainath‘s book Everybody loves a good drought has been ready fallback for sub-editors stuck for a headline. (A lot like the movie title The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.) #Coronavirus is as good a time as any to doff the mask to Sainath’s book which,…
Journalists’ unions file PIL against jobs losses and wage cuts; ask newspapers’ and broadcasters’ bodies not to “misuse” Coronavirus lockdown
Q: How free is India’s “free press” if it has to depend on government ads to survive after the Coronavirus? A: Don’t even ask that question, or else.
In mature democracies around the world, the news media goes out of its way to underline its independence to the outside world—to convey that they are credible businesses not beholden to governments, businesses or other vested interests for their survival and journalism. #CoronaVirus seems to have blown away even that little figleaf in the world’s…
“We are all in a deep mess. The time has come for every business to press the ‘reset’ button, especially print media”: newspapers and magazines in the age of #GoCoronaGo: going, going, gone?
*** In 1988, Andrew Grove, the founder and former CEO of the American chip-manufacturing giant Intel, wrote a book titled Only the Paranoid Survive, in which he floated the concept of the “strategic inflection point”. “A strategic inflection point is a time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change.…
Newspaper industry in very real danger of turning “sick”: INS seeks two-year tax holiday after “triple whammy” of Coronavirus, falling ad revenues, and customs duty on newsprint
*** Forever wailing, the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) has sought a two-year tax holiday from the Union government following the “triple whammy” of #coronavirus, collapsing ad revenues, and customs duty on imported newsprint. In a letter to Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, INS president Shailesh Gupta of Dainik Jagran says the newspaper industry is at…
Full text of the 7-page application made by the Press Council of India, backing the Narendra Modi government’s curbs on the media in Kashmir, in the “interest of integrity and sovereignty”
India’s media bodies have spectacularly failed Kashmir’s media as they battle physical, professional, psychological and commercial challenges, following the blockade of land lines, mobile phones and the internet. The owners’ body Indian Newspaper Society (INS) has been deathly silent, even while full editions of newspapers cannot be reported, printed or distributed. The Editors Guild of…
For three days running, Kashmir’s newspapers have not been published. To no one’s surprise, neither the Press Council of India, nor the Indian Newspaper Society, nor the Editors Guild seem to be unduly bothered.
These are the front pages of four English language newspapers published from Srinagar, for Sunday, August 4, and Monday, August 5, 2019. The newspapers have not been published on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, following the clampdown on phone, internet, broadband, and cable TV services in the wake of India’s decision to strip the Valley of…
President speaks of paid news, dumbing down
The following is the full text of the speech delivered by the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, at the inauguration of the platinum jubilee celebrations of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) in New Delhi on Thursday, 27 February 2014: *** By PRANAB MUKHERJEE “Seventy-five years ago, the world was a very different place. Our country…
Look, who’s putting up a statue for press freedom
Of all the noxious fumes that emanated from the coal allocation scam that hit UPA-II in 2012, was the perils of political and business interests of media owners and groups, which extend beyond the media. For, among the impressive list of beneficiaries of “Coalgate” was the name of Vijay Darda, the Congress MP who runs…
Justice Katju ‘Sorry’ for calling journos idiots
Within days of his appointment as the chairman of the Press Council of India in October 2011, immediately following his retirement as a judge of the Supreme Court, Justice Markandey Katju ran afoul of his colleagues on the council with his sweeping remark that he had a “poor opinion” of most journalists. The “tendentious and…
How papers are working around wage board
With the Union government having notified the recommendations of the Majithia wage board for journalists and other employees, newspaper managements are on a collision course. The Indian Newspaper Society (INS) has slammed the government go-ahead despite industry representations; at least three newspaper houses have filed cases against it; and insiders say a November 16 meeting…
INS: ‘Wage board move will kill most newspapers’
After dithering for months, the Union cabinet has approved the recommendations of the G.R. Majithia wage board for journalists and other employees of newspapers and news agencies, subject to the final order of the Supreme Court which is hearing petitions from at least three media houses. The Indian Newspaper Society (INS), which had steadfastly opposed…
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…
Why the wage board is good for journalists
The recommendations of the Majithia wage board for journalists and other newspaper employees have clearly split newspaper owners and newspaper workers. The big dads of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) have rejected the recommendations, taken out advertisements, filed cases and published articles to build “public opinion”. But two small newspaper owners, both members of INS,…
9 reasons why wage board is bad for journalism
The recommendations of the Majithia wage board for working journalists and “other newspaper employees” has set the proverbial cat among the paper tigers. The industry body, Indian Newspaper Society (INS), has come out all guns blazing. It has called the wage board “an arbitary and undemocratic institution”, whose recommendations are designed to stifle media freedom.…
Media barons wake up together, sing same song
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: The proprietors, promoters and publishers of India’s newspapers and magazines haven’t had a word to say on some of the biggest issues confronting Indian media—and directly impacting the trust and faith of the reader—in recent years. Paid news, in which advertisements are couched as news? Silence. Private treaties, in which…
IJR 