Dr Kafeel Khan is, without doubt, one of the most egregious victims of majoritarianism in contemporary India, where a vengeful state unleashes the blunt instruments at its disposal to “teach a lesson” to a member of the minorities—and is cheered on in this naked display of brutality. The paediatrician’s cardinal sin was to flag the…
Tag Archives: The Asian Age
‘Deccan Chronicle’ owed lenders Rs 8,180 crore. An arbitrator tells BCCI to shell out Rs 8,000 crore for cancelling its IPL franchise. Will Venkattram Reddy be back in control? Take a wild guess.
Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad’s oldest and biggest English newspaper, has been under the pump for quite some time now, but the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has provided a windfall boon for the premature termination of its IPL franchise. Rs 4,800 crore, if you read Mint, or Business Standard. Rs 8,000 crore, if…
“India has ceded territory to China”: near-unanimous newspaper editorials call the Modi government’s bluff—and reaffirm the value of print journalism
Editorials in India’s major English newspapers on the “mutual disengagement” that India and China have agreed upon, are nearly unanimous in their verdict: under “strong man” Narendra Modi, India has surrendered its territory to China. The mature and considered reading of the newspapers is in marked contrast to TV news channels parroting the BJP-led NDA…
In Gauri Lankesh’s home-state, a frighteningly real story of ‘fake news’, with the clumsy footprints of BJP and RSS—and embedded ‘sangh’ journalists and newspapers. (And, yes, a fake news peddler followed by Narendra Modi.)
*** A leading Kannada newspaper owned by a former three-term BJP MP and a serial fake news peddler followed by Narendra Modi on Twitter, have been embroiled in a forged letter scandal, following the arrest of a “journalist” owing allegiance to the RSS. # The newspaper is Vijaya Vani owned by former Dharwad (North) MP Vijay Sankeshwar. #…
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 investigative TV journo who now sells sarees
The state of mainstream Indian journalism, it can be argued, is somewhat reflected by the number of journalists churning out books; leaving for greener PR, corporate communications and “policy”) pastures; joining thinktanks; going on sabatticals, etc—and it is probably no different from the rest of the world. But nobody drives home the issue better than…
‘International Herald Tribune’ becomes INYT
The legendary International Herald Tribune (IHT) has published its last print issue today with its current mastead. From tomorrow, 15 October 2013, it will be sold under the name-plate “International New York Times” (INYT). IHT’s name-change isn’t the first. The New York Herald, launched in 1887 in Europe, became the New York Herald Tribune, which…
9 lessons a ‘terror-suspect’ journo learnt in jail
Deccan Herald journalist Muthi-ur-Rahman Siddiqui has walked out of the central jail in Bangalore a free man, six months after being named by the city’s police in an alleged Lashkar-e-Toiba plot to target two Kannada journalists and the publisher of the newspaper they were earlier employed in. Siddiqui had been accused of being the “mastermind”…
‘Mail Today’ rises in the land of ‘The Daily Mail’
Making use of the five-and-a-half hour time gap, Mail Today, the tabloid daily from the India Today group, has expanded its footprint to the United Kingdom. Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie explains the move in a note on page 3: “Targeting the large south Asian population in London, Mail Today wants to connect with the diaspora by…
Will underworld dons trust such a hot reporter?
Mail Today, the tabloid newspaper from the India Today group, has a report today that Gul Panag, the former Miss India Universe, has been signed up by the maverick film maker Ram Gopal Varma to play a crime reporter in an upcoming film. The buzz in film circles is that Gul Panag may play the…
Coming soon: ‘Deccan Herald’ from New Delhi
Bangalore’s oldest English newspaper, Deccan Herald, is launching an edition in New Delhi, making it the first South Indian publication to reach out to readers and advertisers in the North with a decidedly South Indian title. There has been no formal announcement from the family-owned group yet, but the buzz is that the edition may…
‘Media standards not keeping pace with growth’
Sanjaya Baru, editor of Business Standard and former media advisor to prime minister Manmohan Singh, delivered the second H.Y. Sharada Prasad memorial lecture on media, business and government at the India International Centre on Sunday, 17 April. This is the full text of his address: *** By SANJAYA BARU I first met H.Y. Sharada Prasad…
The ‘Lone Hindu’ gets it from M.J. Akbar’s paper
Dileep Padgaonkar, The Times of India’s former editor who once said he held the second-most important job in the country, has been named one of three interlocutors in Kashmir by the UPA government. However, the usually softspoken Francophile has been hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons in his new job, even as he…
‘Indian media doesn’t value factual reporting’
Of all the documentaries built around the November 26, 2008 siege of Bombay, none has quite matched the buzz created by Dan Reed for Channel 4. Partly because it was the first of the lot; largely because it contained eyepopping footage including of the lone surviving terrorist Ajmal Kasab (in picture) being interrogated. In an…
Rajan Bala, a stellar cricket writer, is no more
sans serif records with deep regret the passing away of the veteran cricket writer Rajan Bala in Bangalore this morning. He was 63 years old, and is survived by his wife and two sons. Mr Bala, a former cricket correspondent of Deccan Herald, The Hindu, Indian Express and The Asian Age, had suffered a cardiac…
For our own cricket correspondent, Rajan Bala
It speaks for the current state (and priorities) of journalism in Bangalore and elsewhere, that the news of one of India’s most knowledgeable cricket correspondents Rajan Bala—formerly of Deccan Herald, Indian Express, The Asian Age—struggling for life in one of the City’s speciality hospitals, should barely make it to the pages of any one of…
Outlook cartoonist bags Maya Kamath award
Sandeep Adhwaryu, the chief illustrator of Outlook magazine, has bagged the first prize in the first “Maya Kamath Memorial Award for excellence in cartooning-2008”, organized by the Indian Institute of Cartoonists, Bangalore. This was the winning entry: The award carries a cash prize of Rs 25,000. The award is in memory of Maya Kamath, India’s…
Maya Kamath Memorial Awards for Cartoonists
PRESS RELEASE: The Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Cartoonists is inviting applications for the first Maya Kamath memorial awards for cartoonists. There are four prizes on offer: three for the best political cartoons of 2008, and a special prize for the best budding cartoonist. The contest is open to cartoonists in English and other regional Indian…
‘It’s all about irreverence, not subservience’
Indian journalist Seema Mustafa on the genesis of her opposition to the India-US nuclear deal, which some speculate could have contributed to M.J. Akbar being eased out of his position as editor of The Asian Age: “It had to do with a certain commitment with which I joined the profession—a belief that journalism was powerful…
‘Never let your head stoop as a journalist’
PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: Mubhashar Jawed Akbar, the wordsmith who once cheekily suggested that Bombay should establish diplomatic relations with the rest of India, has been eased out of his position as editor-in-chief of a pioneering experiment in Indian journalism, The Asian Age. M.J. Akbar, as the world better knows him, was driving…
IJR 