Jug Suraiya pays tribute to R.V. Smith, the former news editor of The Statesman, in a column in today’s Times of India. The tribute is interesting for three reasons. One, it is mostly about Jug Suraiya, not the recently deceased Smith. Two, despite having lived in Delhi for over 30 years, Jug Suraiya admits their…
Tag Archives: Jug Suraiya
TOI impact? HT restores cryptic crossword!
When The Times of India took the long ladder down in the late 1990s, among the things its brand managers knocked out was the cryptic crossword with barely a squeak from readers, editors (and TOI receptionists!) who had grown up on it. No such luck with the Hindustan Times. The paper may have long buried…
Why Jug Suraiya doesn’t buy Hindustan Times
There are many reasons why people buy newspapers (and inshallah, newsmagazines). To be part of the shared conversation; to get an organised view of the world; to keep up with the Joneses; to get news and views and ads; to be educated and engaged and entertained. Jug Suraiya throws light on another reason in The…
How seven cartoonists drew one TOI cartoon
As part of its dodransbicentennial celebrations, The Times of India has published “a cavalcade of cartoons over 175 years”. Titled “Jest in Time“, it is put together by Ajit Ninan, Neelabh Banerjee and Jug Suraiya. At its launch in New Delhi on Monday, seven well-known cartoonists—Sudhir Tailang from Deccan Chronicle, Manjul from Daily News and…
Jug Suraiya on The Hindu-TOI war of ads
Jug Suraiya captures the ad war between The Hindu and The Times of India, through the mouths of two newspaper readers, M/s Gup and Shup: Shup: Boring! The Hindu boring? Listen, buddy, let me wisen you up…. What The Hindu has is gravitas. In fact, it’s got gravitas with a capital G. Gup: Gravitas? Isn’t…
Jug Suraiya on MJ, SJ, Giri, Monu & Mamma T
PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from Delhi: Books about The Times of India are like city buses. There isn’t one for years, and then two come along around the same time. And on both occasions, punsters imported from Calcutta are the ones steering the wheel. Bachi Karkaria came out with Behind the Times, “a poorly structured, poorly…
When Samir served a thali, Vineet served a scoop
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: As it approaches its dosquicentennial, India’s biggest English language newspaper, The Times of India, truly deserved a meticulous biography to tell the world on “what goes on inside this amazing media machine”. Sadly, Bachi Karkaria‘s Behind the Times (Times Books, 325 pages) is not that. Poorly structured, poorly sourced and…
A pre-Google ‘Bomb Mama’ of nuclear prolificity
The passing away of K. Subrahmanyam, the bureaucrat turned strategic affairs expert and journalist, at the age of 82 after a valiant battle with cancer, has provoked a flurry of warm tributes in newspapers. The former Economic Times editor Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, who brought “Subbu” into ET, recalls Subrahmanyam’s prolificity: “Many journalists have trouble…
107 headlines from ToI on Commonwealth Games
Pride of the nation? No, shame of the nation. The following is a list of the 107 “negative” headlines on the Commonwealth Games that have greeted readers of The Times of India (Delhi market) from August 1 to September 2, 2010: • Now, two top cyclists fall victim to dengue • Dengue threat right at…
Jug Suraiya takes on the mighty Big B
The reverberations of Amitabh Bachchan‘s blog comments on the Academy Award-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire are now being felt in the “cesspool” of Indian journalism. In his reaction to the movie, Bachchan wrote in January: “If SM projects India as [a] third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let…
IJR 