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: Malayala Manorama
J-POD || Podcast || “Phone is king. Less is best. Follow stories, not editions. Newsrooms must be a zoo of different animals” || Life-lessons from news design guru Mario Garcia
At a time when consumers are exposed to beautifully crafted products from around the world, the first object Indians pick up every morning is The Daily Shame. Barring the odd exception, most Indian newspapers in every language look like a dog’s meal—a mishmash of leftovers of all colours, shapes and sizes with barely any clarity…
“The chief editor ‘Mathrubhumi’ didn’t have”: M.P. Veerendra Kumar, the socialist media baron who brought two globalising forces to their knees in Kerala: Coca-Cola and ‘The Times of India’
The small division looking after the printing of currency notes is one of the outposts of North Block in New Delhi. The bosses can barely be bothered with its expenses. But for a brief while during the I.K. Gujral regime in 1997, it received some serious love. “What paper are we using?” “Why is there…
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
*** 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 least…
Unlike gau-belt newspapers, Tamil and Malayalam newspapers are more sober and less triumphalist on the Ayodhya judgment on their front pages. Kannada is a gone case; Telugu is on the way.
The symbiotic relationship between the Hindi language press and the Ramjanmabhoomi movement, each feeding off the other, has been much documented. Today’s front pages, the day after the Supreme Court delivered its verdict, shines a mirror on it. As opposed to the safe, anodyne headlines of English newspapers, which for the most part are sober,…
Everybody’s favourite MP, P.Rajeev—the Chief Editor of ‘Deshabhimani’—is digging deep in Ernakulam to find out which side of the brain makes voters decide: left, or right?
Drawing room chats on the state of Indian politics almost always end up in collective kvetching, before everyone drowns their miseries in a glass of hypocrisy—and returns to forward the latest WhatsApp bile with their signature emoji. 🙏 “Wish we didn’t have to choose the best from among the worst.” “Wish our parties would stop…
How an ‘Economic Times’ reporter’s tweet enabled a 68-year-old Wayanad woman, who survives on Rs 36 a day, to get the photo (and a hug) of a lifetime
On Wednesday, April 3, Indulekha Aravind, a feature writer with The Economic Times, was in Kalpetta town, in Wayanad in Kerala, meeting people a day before Congress president Rahul Gandhi was to file his nomination papers from the constituency. It is the cliched election vox-pop—a big-town reporter in a small town trying to gauge public opinion,…
When every newspaper is going hyperlocal with a vengeance, ‘Dina Thanthi’ goes international with a Sri Lanka edition
Indian print media majors have not just been opposed—viscerally at first; superficially now—to the entry of foreign direct investment (FDI), or the publication of foreign titles. They have also been reluctant to venture out themselves. The Times of India briefly pondered editions in the Gulf. The Asian Age launched an edition in London. But there…
The quasquicentennial of ‘Malayala Manorama’
Malayala Manorama, once India’s largest selling newspaper before being overtaken by Dainik Jagran and The Times of India, has just completed the valedictory of its quasquicentennial celebrations. Above is the first issue of the paper, which began as a weekly, published on March 22, 1888. Below is the March 13, 2014 issue, which captures prime…
‘UFO’ sends South Indian papers into a tizzy
PALINI R. SWAMY writes from Bangalore: Two south Indian newspapers, the Malayala Manorama (in picture, above) and the New Indian Express, have reported the sighting of an unidentified flying object (UFO) in Kannur district in Kerala. According to Manorama, the picture was taken by Major Sebastian Zachariah, an Indian army officer serving on the UN…
A Spanish hand behind a Malayalam newspaper
The Malayalam daily Malayala Manorama has unveiled a new look. The redesign has been done by Errea Commuications, the design house of the Spanish designer Javier Errea. Image: courtesy Newspaper Design Also read: Another boilerplate redesign from Mario Garcia Also read: In its golden jubilee year, ET gets a redesign Good heavens, another Mario Garcia…
Now, you can lick an “Indian Legend” for Rs 5
No statue may be erected in memory of a critic, but a stamp can certainly be issued in memory of an editor. K.M. Mathew, the chief editor of what was once India’s largest selling newspaper, Malayala Manorama, who passed away a year ago, has been described by the prime minister as an “Indian legend“. And…
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…
‘Newspaper In Education’ has a new meaning
For decades The Times of India Relief Fund used to be the paper’s most prominent “CSR activity”. Malayala Manorama took the lead the in building houses in earthquake-hit Latur in the mid-1990s. Plenty of newspapers and magazines chipped in for the tsunami-affected in Tamil Nadu. India Today even launched a project called Care Today. Now,…
‘The Week’ photographer bags WAN-IFRA gold
Bhanu Prakash Chandra, photographer with The Week magazine, with the gold award in feature photography which he bagged at the 10th annual Asia Media awards hosted by the world association of newspapers and news publishers (WAN-IFRA) in Bangkok on Thursday, 28 April. Chandra earned the award for his pictorial travelogue of a bike journey in…
What K.M. Mathew could teach today’s tykes
By T.J.S. GEORGE Being famous is different from being important. The trimurtis of English journalism in India–Pothan Joseph, Frank Moraes, M. Chalapathi Rao–are still unequalled in their star value and brilliance of writing. But historically they mattered little because they introduced no movement that transformed their profession. Devdas Gandhi of Hindustan Times and Kasturi Srinivasan…
15 things you didn’t know about K.M. Mathew
The passing away of the doyen of Malayalam journalism, Kandathil Mammen Mathew, better known as K.M. Mathew, on Sunday has resulted in a rare outpouring of coverage, with Indian media proprietors burying their usual pettiness about competitors to salute one of their own. So much so that the news of the death of the chief…
K.M. Mathew, chief editor, Manorama, no more
sans serif records with regret the passing away of K.M. Mathew, the rubber planter who became chief editor of Malayala Manorama and founding editor of the newsweekly magazine, The Week. The end came in his residence in Kottayam this morning. Mr Mathew was 93 years old, and is survived by three sons—Mammen Mathew, Philip Mathew,…
‘Hindu and HT were worst offenders in 1975’
With nearly 60% of India reputedly being under 25 years of age—in other words, with three out of five Indians having been born after 1985—it stands to reason that the 35th anniversary of the declaration of Emergency by the Indira Gandhi government should have come and gone without creating a ripple. That, and the fact…
IJR 