The latest issue of Caravan magazine has more than just the story of former Indian Express editor-in-chief, Shekhar Gupta. There is a fine profile of Eenadu bossman Ramoji Rao, and there are interesting numbers in a data analysis of the big newspapers by howindialives.com. One of the charts (above) in the latter story is how…
Tag Archives: Ravi Dhariwal
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Since its sesquicentennial 25 years ago, under bossman Samir Jain’s helmsmanship, The Times of India has pioneered several editorial and marketing “initiatives”, all of which are scorned at first by the competition and then quietly copied. On the eve of its dodransbicentennial, after brother Vineet Jain told The New Yorker last year that he was…
The Ambani brothers, TOI, Medianet & paid news
The “reverse-swing” done on Zee News by Jindal Steel is one of the most intriguing media stories in recent memory. The steel company says it is suing the Subhash Chandra-owned network for Rs 200 crore for the demand of Rs 100 crore in lieu of advertisements allegedly made by its editors, Sudhir Chaudhary and Sameer…
Samir Jain, Vineet Jain & TOI in The New Yorker
The October 8 issue of The New Yorker carries a nine-page article on The Times of India by its renowned media critic Ken Auletta in the clearest indication yet that the Times group is bracing for an IPO. Titled “Citizens Jain”, after the brothers Samir Jain and Vineet Jain, the piece examines why India’s newspaper…
Now, The Times of India takes on Financial Times
First, Financial Times took out an advertisement, in the name of its CEO John Ridding, in response to an ad appearing in The Times of India promoting the desi “Financial Times” published by Times Publishing House. Now, the Times group has returned the favour with an an ad, not in the name of its CEO…
Samir Jain’s son-in-law rises on TOI horizon
Six days after the internet chief of the Times group, Rishi Khiani, quit to start his own venture, the new CEO Satyan Gajwani—son-in-law of Times bossman Samir Jain—has made his appearance in the newspaper. A business page story in the paper today announces that the Times’ online music platform will be available on Microsoft’s Surface.…
An ad? An edit? Advertorial? Edvertisement?
The front page of The Sunday Times of India on January 15, with the anchor story at the bottom headlined”Get 110% out of your body with Functional Manual Therapy”. Credited to “TNN” (Times News Network) and printed in the same body font as the rest of the paper, the article touts an “effective evaluation and…
Ravi Dhariwal: Reader is king, reader is the CEO
Ravi Dhariwal, the chief executive officer of The Times of India group, on why Indian newspapers still continue to be successful unlike in western markets. “Coming from an FMCG background, fundamentally the first thing that I look at is, is it good for our consumers? Is it good for our advertisers and customers? The traditional…
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…
Media barons wake up together, sing same song
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: The proprietors, promoters and publishers of India’s newspapers and magazines haven’t had a word to say on some of the biggest issues confronting Indian media—and directly impacting the trust and faith of the reader—in recent years. Paid news, in which advertisements are couched as news? Silence. Private treaties, in which…
Why is Rupert Murdoch taking on Samir Jain?
New Delhi’s media circles have agog all this week with news of a “sting” operation on The Times of India by The Sunday Times of London. The question: why would Rupert Murdoch‘s paper take on Samir Jain‘s, especially when it is not revealing anything particularly new? Is something afoot between the media giants? Has a…
Vishweshwar Bhat quits Vijaya Karnataka
Vishweshwar Bhat, the popular yet controversial editor of Vijaya Karnataka, the mass-circulation Kannada daily owned by The Times of India group, has resigned. Bhat’s decision was announced to his staff this afternoon after a meeting with ToI chief executive officer Ravi Dhariwal and chief marketing officer Rahul Kansal who had flown down to Bangalore. Bhat…
‘The name is Gajwani. Satyan Suresh Gajwani.’
PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from Delhi: Although they run India’s largest home-grown media empire, the seamer side of which unabashedly peeks into the lives of people, the Jains of The Times of India group treasure their privacy like they do, well, their marketshare. (Almost.) Elder son Samir Jain, 55, rarely makes public appearances of the sort…
Is management responsible for content too?
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: Can a newspaper (or magazine or website) publish anything in the name of a “debate”? Is such content questionable even when it does not directly spark trouble on the ground? And, in the eyes of the law, who is to be held responsible for the publication of such content? These…
The greatgrandmother of all newspaper battles
ARVIND SWAMINATHAN writes from Madras: “Unprecedented” is the most misused and abused word in Indian journalism. Anything—almost everything—that the desk couldn’t check if it had happened before, is effortlessly slapped with the label “unprecedented”. But 14 April 2008 will truly be an “unprecedented” day in the annals of Indian print media when the first bundle…
IJR 