The Times of India group has reportedly decided to pull the shutters down on its tabloid offering Mumbai Mirror as COVID continues to take its toll on Indian media. A Times Group statement doing the rounds says Mumbai Mirror will be turned into a weekly, a standard operating procedure used by Bennett Coleman & Co…
Tag Archives: The Independent
Vinod Mehta, the Last Great Editor, 1942-2015
sans serif records with deep regret the passing of the Editorial Chairman of Outlook magazine, Vinod Mehta, in New Delhi on Sunday, 8 March 2015. He was 73 years old and had been ailing for some time. He leaves behind his wife Sumita Paul, their canine companion, “Editor”, two brothers and a sister—and legions of…
An Editor is never too old to learn a new trick
After 42 years of handwriting his columns, articles and books on scribblepads—at Debonair,The Sunday Observer, The Indian Post, The Independent, The Pioneer and Outlook*—and after hiding the vicious mouse behind his PC all his life, Outlook* editorial chairman Vinod Mehta writes his latest Diary on his new laptop, in New Delhi on Tuesday. “I found…
Vinod Mehta on Arun Shourie, Dileep Padgaonkar
“India’s most independent, principled and irreverent editor” Vinod Mehta has just published a memoir. Titled Lucknow Boy, the editor-in-chief of the Outlook* group of magazines, recaptures his four-decade journalistic journey via Debonair, The Sunday Observer, The Indian Post, The Independent and The Pioneer. With trademark candour often bordering on the salacious, the twice-married but childless Mehta reveals that he fathered a child in…
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…
Calcutta editor arrested for Independent article
Many years ago, a news editor of Indian origin was arrested in Dubai for having carried a Peanuts cartoon strip that was not OK with the censors. In a similar incident, the editor, and publisher and printer, of The Statesman, Calcutta, were arrested yesterday on “a specific complaint” from a resident of Calcutta against the…
‘I wish I had a gun rather than a camera’
Sebastian D’Souza, the photo editor of Mumbai Mirror, whose image of one of the terrorists, who sprayed bullets at Victoria Terminus coolly walking around the railway station, went around the world has spoken of how he got to catch the frame. Some of the police on duty, he tells The Independent, London, were reluctant to…
Have you signed the petition to Save Pervez?
Pervez Kambaksh, a 23-year-old Afghan journalist is facing execution after a religious court in that country found him guilty of downloading material from the internet which is said to question the role of women in Islam. The Independent, London, has launched a campaign to save Pervez, and Roy Greenslade says every journalist must sign the…
When a forger decides to use a famous byline
When Robert Fisk, the London Independent‘s most famous byline, received a copy of a small, 272-page Arabic paperback biography of Saddam Hussain in the mail, he didn’t care much until he read a small note in English accompanying it. “Robert,” it read. “Did you really write this?” Robert really hadn’t. So he decided to trace…
IJR 