With the South-based New Indian Express group of Manoj Kumar Sonthalia entering the Delhi market with the Sunday Standard, the North-based Indian Express group of Viveck Goenka has returned the favour by entering the Bangalore market with the National Standard. The 20-page daily, priced at Rs 4, has been launched on Independence Day with a…
Tag Archives: New Indian Express
Editor declares assets, liabilities on live TV
Even as a question mark hangs over the heads of many editors and journalists, H.R. Ranganath, the chairman and managing director of the newly launched Kannada news channel, Public TV, has declared his assets and liabilities on live television, with his tax consultant sitting alongside him and reading out the list. Ranganath—former editor of the…
‘Kannada Prabha’ is now Rajeev Chandrasekhar’s
Kannada Prabha, the Kannada daily established by Ramnath Goenka, has a new owner from today, 1 July 2011: mobile phone baron turned businessman and member of Parliament, Rajeev Chandrasekhar. Chandrasekhar’s Jupiter Media & Entertainment Ventures began the creeping acquisition of Kannada Prabha, valued at Rs 250 crore, through a “strategic business alliance” with Kannada Prabha Publications…
Kannada Prabha uses reader-generated headlines
“Interactivity” has been the buzzword in the English media for over a decade now. Readers have always written letters to the editor in the past, but now they also do film reviews, shoot and caption pictures, draw cartoons, ask and answer questions from other readers, take part in citizen journalist shows, post realtime comments by…
It’s official: Prabhu Chawla out of India Today
Former India Today editor Prabhu Chawla‘s mysterious mass email to all contacts in his addressbook without announcing his next port of call: *** HI, This is to inform you that after 14 years in India Today, I am moving on. Next month, I will be joining an established multi-languages and multi-editions media organization. I will…
Vir Sanghvi “suspends” Hindustan Times column
Vir Sanghvi‘s weekly Hindustan Times column Counterpoint will not appear from next Sunday, after tapes of his alleged conversations with the lobbyist Niira Radia surfaced in Outlook* and Open magazines last week. The column which will appear tomorrow, 28 November 2010, will be his last, although Sanghvi claims on his website, a) that he is…
Who really named All India Radio as Akashvani?
PALINI R. SWAMY writes: Mysore’s preminent position in the setting up and christening of All India Radio as “Akashvani” has gone uncontested for well over half a century. Now, in the 75th year of AIR, an unlikely challenger has emerged from 300 km away. A 70-year-old woman has stood up in Udupi to assert that…
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…
It’s official: Rajeev Chandrashekar-KP alliance
After days of speculation, the official confirmation. Former BPL scion and Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrasekhar‘s “strategic partnership alliance” with Express publications for control of Kannada Prabha is now out. (The transaction, when completed, is said to be valued at Rs 250 crore.) Below is the full text. *** “Jupiter Media and Entertainment Ventures (Jupiter)…
Not just about the brothers, it’s the children too
Far from being cowed down by N. Ram‘s threat to sue for the “demonstrable falsehoods and defamatory assertions” in its report on “Ram’s role and actions in developments within the newspaper group and the company“, the Indian Express continues its coverage of the goings-on in the board room of the “Mount Road Mahavishnu” for the…
Rajeev Chandrasekhar eyeing ‘Kannada Prabha’?
PALINI R. SWAMY writes from Bangalore: Bangalore’s media circles are abuzz with rumours that Kannada Prabha, the struggling Kannada newspaper owned by the New Indian Express group, is being eyed by the Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who also owns the 24×7 Kannada news channel Suvarna News. Obviously, there are no confirmations or denials of…
The Taslima Nasrin “article” that cost two lives
The front page of Saptahika Prabha, the weekly magazine section of the Kannada daily Kannada Prabha of the New Indian Express group, carrying the controversial piece on the burqa by Taslima Nasrin, which led to protests and riots in Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa‘s hometown, Shimoga, killing two people on Monday. The story titled Purdah…
For Indian journos, April 1 comes 9 months early
Infallible Indian journalists have been spooked by a delightful Da Vinci Code style hoax played on them. On Sunday, almost every newspaper reported the arrest of Johann Bach, an 88-year-old Nazi war criminal, in the jungles of Khanapur, close to Goa, on Saturday. A classified advertisement inserted by the “Waffen SS” fugitive to sell an…
‘ToI more known for marketing than journalism’
In a very candid interview with B. Judy Franko of Exchange4Media, N. Murali, the managing director of The Hindu, talks of the Madras market, post the entry of The Times of India: # On rumours that The Hindu is talking to Fairfax of Australia for a possible minority stake sale: “The reports are baseless.” #…
‘Buy-sell-save-spend. Live rich. Enjoy.’
The monsoon is still a couple of months away but it’s raining newspapers in southern India. Last Friday, the new New Indian Express hit the stands. On Monday, The Times of India launched in Madras. And on Wednesday, Financial Chronicle, the business daily from the Deccan Chronicle group, arrived in Hyderabad and Madras. In photograph…
In the New Indian Express, old hands get the sack
PALINI R. SWAMY writes from Bangalore: Every employee loves getting an award, especially if it is in recognition of outstanding work or meritorious contributions to the organisation. And if the award happens to be a “Chairman’s Award”, the importance of the recognition is worth its weight in gold. But in The New Indian Express, which…
IJR 