SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, and India’s most powerful business house, Reliance Industries, are believed to have served a legal notice on several TV news channels for airing anti-corruption activist Arvind Kejriwal‘s allegations against them in October and November last year. However, it is not known if Kejriwal, a former…
Tag Archives: Sharanya Kanvilkar
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…
When cricket journalists go to Brian Lara’s home
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: Itinerant sports reporters usually tag along with their compatriots during assignments on foreign shores, partly because of the chummy nature of sports journalists but also because it makes sense, i.e. it is paisa vasool. Newspapers and magazines pay a decent-enough per diem these days, but it’s never enough to enable…
‘Hindu Business Line’ to get a non-family editor
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: Less than a week after the board of directors of The Hindu “decided” to appoint a professional from outside the family as the editor of the 132-year-old newspaper, the group’s business daily, The Hindu Business Line, is also slated to go the same way. The paper’s joint editor, K. Venugopal—son…
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…
Is it all over for DNA in the battle for Bombay?
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: The October 8 issue of Forbes magazine, from the CNBC-TV18 group, carries a four-page story that reads more like an advance obituary for DNA, the English broadsheet daily newspaper that was launched by the Dainik Bhaskar and Zee television groups to humble The Times of  India in urbs prima in…
What Raghav Bahl could learn from Samir Jain
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: Some time in the mid-20th century, the legendary New Yorker writer (and foodie) A.J. Liebling famously said, “freedom of the press belongs to those who own one“. For proof in the early 21st, he might like to take a look at Raghav Bahl. The founder, editor, controlling shareholder and managing…
Has R.K. Laxman drawn his last cartoon?
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: A question mark hangs over India’s most famous exclamation mark after a further slip in health of Rasipuram Krishnaswami Laxman, the iconic cartoonist of The Times of India. The 86-year-old Laxman, who has drawn cartoons for ToI for 63 years, has been airlifted to Bombay, reportedly after suffering a “mild…
Has Twitter found Mark Tully’s character assassin?
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: Can a nearly spotless journalistic career of 45 years—30 of those for one of the most trusted broadcasters in the world—be tainted, tarbrushed and tarnished by a pathetic paperback written under a pseudonym? If your name is Sir William Mark Tully, OBE, the answer has to seem, yes. And the…
Old wine in very old bottle is still old wine
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: The Times of India has unveiled its ‘Crest Edition‘ in Bombay and Delhi with a 40-page offering at an “introductory price” of Rs 6 per copy. (The ‘Crest Edition‘ branding is embedded below the masthead in italics.) “Why another newspaper or magazine, you may well ask. Don’t we already have…
‘The endgame is near for both TV 18 and NDTV’
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: Indian media houses, generally speaking, have been cagey in reporting the economic downturn and what it is doing to the man (and woman) on the street. They haven’t ignored it, of course, but they have been, let’s say, less boisterous than they were when reporting the boom. At one level,…
Don’t laugh: Do journos make good politicians?
PRITAM SENGUPTA in New Delhi and SHARANYA KANVILKAR in Bombay write: The stunning defeat of the BJP in the general elections has been dissected so many times and by so many since May 16 that there is little that has been left unsaid. What has been left unsaid is how the BJP’s defeat also marks…
Pyramid Saimira, Tatva & Times Private Treaties
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: A nice little question mark hangs over Times Private Treaties, the controversial investment arm of The Times of India group, after India’s stock market regular yesterday barred 230 persons/entities from dealing in the securities market following their “prima facie” involvement in a forgery scam involving Pyramid Saimira Theatre Limited, an…
The sad and pathetic decline of Arun Shourie
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: Arun Shourie is one of the strangest cases on the Indian intellectual landscape if not its most disappointing. A living, walking, moving advertisement of how rabid ideology can addle even the most riveting of minds, stripping it of all its nuance and pretence; its very soul and humanity. *** Once…
Why JoJo might want to leave The Times of India
SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: Well-placed sources in command central of The Times of India group confirm that the paper’s executive editor, Jaideep Bose aka JoJo, has indeed put in his papers as has been rumoured for the last couple of days, but not even editors who have his ear are in a position to…
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