ARVIND SWAMINATHAN writes from Madras: Depending on what you expect of your newspaper, either The Times of India played just the right role in the N. Srinivasan matter: proactively taking up an issue that concerns a “nation of a billion-plus”, right up to the very end, even if it did not secure the end it…
Tag Archives: IPL
‘Regional TV better than English news channels’
Malvika Singh, the publisher of Seminar magazine, in The Telegraph, Calcutta: “A pathetic scam that is plaguing the Indian Premier League has been making headlines for days, as though nothing else of any importance is happening in India. The media has been grossly irresponsible in this regard. This has not only made public discourse mediocre,…
BCCI’s 8-point list of media don’ts for IPL
Giving the kind of brand equity cricket commands, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has been majestically proactive in protecting its rights (and the rights of rights holders) over the game. Result: representatives of Cricinfo, which is now owned by ESPN, cannot file from the press box and have to watch the…
How journalists are aiding the decadent IPL
The academic, writer and critic Mukul Kesavan in The Times of India: “The IPL is, in media terms, such a honeypot, that the traditional distinction between pundits in the electronic and print media paid to comment on sport and the commentators contracted to describe and celebrate it on television, has dissolved. We have seen people…
Why a unique newspaper isn’t covering the IPL
This week’s Sunday Guardian carries a story on Sparshdnyan, a newspaper in Braille for the visually impaired. Published out of Bombay twice a month, the 48-page paper is sent out to some 400 subscribers in Maharashtra. The paper’s editor Swagat Thorat estimates readership at 24,000 copies per issue, most of them in the 18-35 segment …
Why the watchdogs didn’t bark during IPL loot
The kerfuffle in the Indian Premier League (IPL) has brought to the fore the conflict of interest that helped prevent the scams and controversies from being detected or reported earlier. The former Somerset captain and cricket writer Peter Roebuck writes in The Hindu: “Cricket tolerates widespread conflicts of interest. “Besides taking seats on the IPL…
‘Dubai is a haven of information for journalists’
Dubai is a recurring theme in the ongoing tragicomedy in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Shashi Tharoor, who has to give up his ministership, was a consultant with a Dubai firm before taking the plunge in electoral politics. His close friend Sunanda Pushkar lives there. The new head of the Cochin IPL franchise Harshad Mehta…
‘Rule No. 1 of journalism: There are no gods.’
Three weeks ago India Today magazine put Lalit Modi, commissioner of the Indian Premier League (IPL) of cricket, on the cover with the line, “Billion-Dollar Baby”. It puts him on the cover again this week, with the line “Run Out”. Editor-in-chief Aroon Purie in his letter to readers, offers a muted mea culpa: “Rule No.…
How come no one saw the IPL cookie crumbling?
The collapse of the Indian Premier League (IPL) pack of cards is identical to the unravelling of the Satyam fraud in 2009, from a media perspective. Namely, no media organisation—newspaper, magazine, TV station or internet website—saw it before it happened. Or wanted to see it coming. The player auctions, the franchise bids, the television rights,…
Look, who is also in the IPL racket? An editor!
In his story on the burgeoning scandal in the Indian Premier League (IPL), Shantanu Guha-Ray, the business editor of Tehelka magazine, casually reveals how “the editor of a major Indian media house whose son had recently come under the radar of corporate intelligence bodies, is also trying to get into the IPL franchise racket.” Image:…
‘Perhaps, it is time for missionary journalists’
In a week in which the Hindustan Times front-paged the story of children eating silica-laced mud not far from Allahabad, and 76 soldiers were ambushed by Maoists in poverty-stricken Dantewada, the former Sunday magazine and India Today correspondent Madhu Jain laments the loss of “missionary journalism” in her DNA column. “The words of my boss…
The Scoreline: different strokes for different folks
The second season of Indian Premier League (IPL), the shotgun wedding of cricket, cinema, celebrity, cheesecake, and commerce, is now into its second week in South Africa, but its influence is alrady being felt not just on the way cricket is played but on the way cricket is covered on the sports pages. The table,…
Why the great Indian media dream crashed
Rs 60 crore for hoardings to promote the launch of a television channel; Rs 1 crore per day for programming. Hindustan Times editorial director Vir Sanghvi on why the great Indian media dream came crashing down: “Many publishing houses ventured into businesses and products they had no understanding of, believing that the revenue from their…
Is anything OK if it can fetch a few dollars?
The Indian Premier League, the marriage between two of India’s greatest fixations, cricket and cinema, will be consummated at 8 pm in Bangalore today. On test is not just the durability of the shotgun wedding but the limits to which the shortest version of the game can be monetised by big business. There are eight…
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