In the mid-1980s, when it still saw itself as a newspaper in the news business, The Times of India launched a annual contest for advertisements created by advertisers and agencies not for profit but in service of the public. The shortlisted entries—on keeping families small, streets clean, etc—were published in a separate pullout, along with…
Tag Archives: The New Yorker
“Journalism is in an extraordinarily healthy place right now. I can’t think of a time when we mattered more”: Malcolm Gladwell shuts down the prophets of doom
The acclaimed New Yorker writer and best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell on journalism, and the future of journalism, in a podcast interview with Anna Maria Tremonti of the Canadian public service broadcaster CBC. Listen to the full show: Malcolm Gladwell
In America, Jeff Bezos has the First Amendment and the institutions to protect media freedom. How will Amazon’s founder deal with the Narendra Modi regime’s apparent ‘Washington Post’ problem?
Over 67 months, the Narendra Modi government has overtly, covertly and expertly extended the Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs) of the #GujaratModel—freezing government ads; bringing corporate pressure on owners; filing bogus FIRs; trolling, name-calling; denying access and licenses; getting editors replaced; owners changed, etc—to get mainstream media to toe its line and manufacture consent. Suddenly, it…
Arnab Goswami has done a fab job: Vineet Jain
Times group managing director Vineet Jain has been named person of the year by the industry journal Impact, from the exchange4media group. In an accompanying interview, Jain junior answers a couple of key questions. Talking to Ken Auletta of The New Yorker [last year], you said, “We are not in the newspaper business, we are…
Sachin Tendulkar, Sigmund Freud & the media
As the Indian (and global) media—print, electronic and digital—reports Sachin Tendulkar‘s retirement from cricket as if it’s the end of the world; as breathless reporters, writers, anchors and tweeters ask “What will happen to cricket now that Sachin is gone?”, now is a good time as any to remember Harold Ross and James Thurber. Ross…
When a Delhi journo joins New Yorker, it’s news
India’s bankrupt politicians routinely detect a “foreign hand” behind every disaster that befalls the nation. The Indian media, on the other hand, has been somewhat blessed to benefit from foreign hands on the deck. Caravan the defunct-fortnightly from the Delhi Press group which was reborn as The Caravan of longform journalism three years ago was…
New Yorker carries TOI response, 7 months later
Exactly seven months after The New Yorker carried a nine-page profile of Samir Jain, Vineet Jain and The Times of India by its acclaimed media critic Ken Auletta, the magazine has carried a response from TOI’s executive editor, Arindam Sen Gupta, in its May 5 issue, on medianet, private treaties and other subsidiary issues. Image: courtesy…
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…
Aditya Sinha tears into Indian Express ‘C’ report
Aditya Sinha, editor-in-chief of DNA, in his weekly column: “There was a telephone call from my father, who lives abroad, a few days ago. He wanted to know if it was true that the Army had planned to attack Delhi back in January, as reported in The Indian Express. Don’t worry, I said, no such…
The grass is always greener on the other side
Former New Yorker and Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown: “Young journalists [should] go work in India. There are so many great newspapers in India. I go quite a lot, actually. It has a very vibrant newspaper and magazine culture. There’s a lot of energy in Delhi, a lot of newsmagazines. It’s a very literary culture,…
‘How can you say it better in your own style?’
James Thurber, the legendary New Yorker writer-cartoonist, in a 1959 memo on editing: “Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, “How can I help this writer to say it better…
Even Al Qaida can’t stand frivolous journalism
Al Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri has kindly “answered” web questions in The New Yorker through the good offices of Andy Borowitz. A magazine journalist in Manhattan is among those who get lucky. Stacy in Manhattan asks: I am a journalist for the US publication Tiger Beat. When I heard you would be taking Web…
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