K. Narayanan, the former news editor and later readers’ editor of The Hindu, has passed on, at age 88. And so has the man who succeeded him at the post: Gomatam Dwarakanath, at age 86. Both on the same day, 29 September 2020. The Narayanan obit highlights his penchant for hard work, integrity, wide knowledge,…
Tag Archives: N. Ram
‘The Hindu’ virtually sounds the death knell for its Mumbai edition, tells 25 ‘elite’ staffers to leave, as COVID wreaks havoc to revenue streams
*** The Mumbai edition of The Hindu, launched with much fanfare five years ago, has run into serious turbulence with over two dozen staffers being asked to leave the 142-year-old organisation at less than a fortnight’s notice. The indicated last date is June 30. Almost all those whose resignations have been sought, orally, had been…
J-POD || A podcast on journalism || “The newspaper business is in danger. It’s an unprecedented challenge for survival. We were in denial till Coronavirus struck” || N. Ram, Chairman, ‘The Hindu’ group
https://soundcloud.com/user-311470525/j-pod-n-ram-former-editor-in *** To look at the deep and debilitating impact #Coronavirus has had on jobs and salaries and workplaces merely through the prism of journalists and editors in India, would be to take a very limited view of what is a larger, systemic problem, one that haunts those way above the payscale of employees. Barring…
Press Council chairman C.K. Prasad and ‘The Hindu’ chairman N. Ram get into a slanging match over PCI seemingly backing media curbs in Kashmir
The kerfuffle over the Press Council of India’s intervention in the Supreme Court on Kashmir Times Editor Anuradha Bhasin‘s petition seeking the lifting of curbs on the media in Kashmir refuses to die down. This, despite the PCI chairman Justice C.K. Prasad clarifying that far from backing the government, the Council was actually performing its…
How N. Ram’s reporting of the #Rafale scandal in ‘The Hindu’ sped across the digital world and into the phones of readers before the Narendra Modi government could put its pants on
Behind the investigation of India’s two biggest defence scandals—the Bofors deal under Rajiv Gandhi and the Rafale deal under Narendra Modi—is one common newspaper and one common byline, The Hindu and N. Ram. But with one big difference: the first scandal was reported when hard-copy, ink-and-paper journalism was king; the latter in the digital age, when…
‘Facebook Live’: 14 journalists from six countries on three continents: Global Digital Conversation on Media Freedom
14 journalists from six countries on three continents join in a six-hour ‘Facebook Live’ global conversation on media freedom. The participants: Alan Rusbridger; Amantha Perera; Abhinandan Sekhri; David Fahrenthold; Faith Sidlow; Ian Jack; Ivor Gaber; Marie Elisabeth Muller; Namrata Sharma; Pratik Sinha; Richard Sambrook; Vinod K. Jose. The event is hosted by Asian College of…
“I keep hearing about the problems media organisations and journalists have undergone [in the Modi era], but the truth is I never faced one: Mukund Padmanabhan on editing ‘The Hindu’
The change of editorship at Indian media houses is (usually) a sinister cloak-and-dagger affair, done in the dead of night sans any grace. Publishers rarely ever feel the need to inform readers why Editor X has left or why Editor Y has come in. Not so, The Hindu. Three months ago, the “Mountroad Mahavishnu” announced…
A masterclass in grace, gratitude and decency from ‘The Hindu’ on how to bid goodbye to an outgoing employee
Decency is not a virtue much in demand in Indian newsrooms, where the mercenary and the mercantile are valued higher. But there is always the rare exception. The Hindu gives its Editor Mukund Padmanabhan (in picture, above) a first-class sendoff upon his retirement, with a graceful (and grateful) front-page acknowledgement of services rendered by him…
N. Ram: ‘Today’s mainstream media is scared to touch the Rafale scandal like it did Bofors. An overarching fear of Narendra Modi has had a chilling effect.”
It is rare in Indian journalism for the same journalist to be at the centre of two major investigations, 30 years apart. In 1989, Narasimhan Ram was Associate Editor of the family-owned newspaper The Hindu when he, along with Chitra Subramaniam, dug into the #Bofors gun deal that set the stage for Rajiv Gandhi’s downfall. In…
Hey, Ram. The “goodness” of the editor-in-chief of ‘The Hitavada’, also the governor of Tamil Nadu, crashlands on ‘Hindu’ soil.
Can a journalist in a court of law make a submission in a case not involving the journalist? The unequivocal answer, according to the Madras High Court, is “yes” but only if called for by the court. *** The controversy began in October 2018 when Tamil Nadu police filed a case under Section 124 of the…
10 reasons why ‘The Hindu’ returned to its past
N. Ram, chairman of Kasturi & Sons Limited and the former editor of The Hindu, on why the “family” reverted to its past after a brief flirtation with “professionals”, in an interview with Shougat Dasgupta of Tehelka: “Editorialising in news reports, editorialising in the guise of news, which is strictly prohibited by the binding code…
‘The Hindu redesign was a mishmash, an eyesore’
The Spanish designer Mario Garcia (in picture, right), who redesigned The Hindu eight years ago before it was “abandoned” by Siddharth Vardarajan upon his appointment as editor, has opened a dialogue with the Madras-based paper now that the 2005 redesign has been restored following the return of the “family” to the helm. Garcia, who is reputed…
Not just a newspaper, a no-paid-news newspaper!
It speaks for the level of distrust that the media has managed to earn for itself that the front page of the Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar carries an emblem in Hindi (right) alongside the masthead, in the space usually reserved for ear-panel advertisements, proclaiming “No Paid News”. Two years ago, the Bombay newspaper DNA, in…
”The Hindu’ situation had become irremediable’
The “professional” editor may have been eased out by redesignating him; the services of the “professional” CEO may have been summarily terminated; and the front page of the paper may have returned to its past. But The Hindu saga is not over yet. After six board members on the 11-member board of Kasturi & Sons…
‘Hindu family’ chucks out ‘professional’ redesign
Four days after The Hindu board summarily decided to pause its ongoing “professionalisation” process, the Mount Road Mahavishnu has reverted to its previous design, as promised by chairman N. Ram in a tweet (below). On the left (top) is the October 21 issue, the last with Varadarajan at the helm, and on the right is…
In a family-owned paper, only furniture is fixed
Nothing is what it appears to be in the thicker-than-water but funnier-than-fill-your-metaphor-here world of family-owned newspapers. Siddharth Varadarajan, installed as editor of The Hindu in a G.Kasturi-N.Ram putsch in 2011, ostensibly to professionalise the paper but allegedly to prevent Malini Parthasarathy from ascending the throne, has resigned dramatically via a Twitter announcement. “With The Hindu‘s…
When ‘Indian Express’ gave ‘The Hindu’ a story
In October 1989, when The Hindu‘s then associate editor, N. Ram, was stopped in his tracks by his uncle and editor, G. Kasturi, from publishing the third part of an investigation into the Bofors gun deal, Ram found a novel method of getting the story out. He called a press conference and handed out the…
Hindu’s longest serving editor G. Kasturi: RIP
sans serif records the demise of Gopalan Kasturi aka G. Kasturi, the longest-serving editor of The Hindu in Madras, early today. He was 87. Although he was the helmsman of a supposedly “orthodox, conservative” newspaper, Kasturi was renowned in the industry as a torchbearer, showing the way with his knowledge of fonts, photography and printing…
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)…
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