Can a journalist in a court of law make a submission in a case not involving the journalist? The unequivocal answer, according to the Madras High Court, is “yes” but only if called for by the court. *** The controversy began in October 2018 when Tamil Nadu police filed a case under Section 124 of the…
Tag Archives: The Week
V.N. Subba Rao: a ‘shishya’ remembers his Guru
There are few more misleading terms in Indian journalism than the phrase “national media”. Only those who flit around in the rarefied circles of Delhi and Bombay, rubbing shoulders with the high and mighty, qualify; everyone else is “upcountry”. Only the bold-faced names from big English media houses are supposed to be national; everyone else…
V.N. Subba Rao, an Express legend, no more
sans serif records with regret the passing away of V.N. Subba Rao, the former chief reporter and chief of bureau of the undivided Indian Express—and a guru and mentor to hundreds of young journalists—in Bangalore, on Tuesday morning. He was 81 years old and had been ailing for a few months. VNSR, as he was…
T.S. SATYAN Awards for Photojournalists
sans serif is pleased to announce the winners of the inaugural T.S. Satyan Memorial Awards for Photojournalism, instituted by India’s first web-based photosyndication agency, Karnataka Photo News, in association with churumuri.com, in memory of the legendary photojournalist who passed away two Decembers ago. The awards will be presented by the governor of Karnataka, H.R. Bhardwaj,…
Killer hospital was featured in two magazine lists
Hindsight is 20-20 and this isn’t the time to point fingers, of course, but the ghastly fire accident at the AMRI hospital in Calcutta that has left nearly 90 dead, most of them patients, draws attention to the pitfalls of magazines, newspapers and TV channels getting into the ranking game, beyond their ken of expertise. On…
Now, you can lick an “Indian Legend” for Rs 5
No statue may be erected in memory of a critic, but a stamp can certainly be issued in memory of an editor. K.M. Mathew, the chief editor of what was once India’s largest selling newspaper, Malayala Manorama, who passed away a year ago, has been described by the prime minister as an “Indian legend“. And…
M.R. SHIVANNA, a true 24/7 journalist, is dead
sans serif records with regret the passing away of M.R. SHIVANNA, an unsung hero of Indian journalism, in Mysore on Saturday. He was 55, and is survived by his wife and daughter. For 30 years and more, Shivanna slogged away in remarkable obscurity and was one of the pillars on which stands India’s most successful…
‘The Week’ photographer bags WAN-IFRA gold
Bhanu Prakash Chandra, photographer with The Week magazine, with the gold award in feature photography which he bagged at the 10th annual Asia Media awards hosted by the world association of newspapers and news publishers (WAN-IFRA) in Bangkok on Thursday, 28 April. Chandra earned the award for his pictorial travelogue of a bike journey in…
Why Aroon Purie ‘elevated’ Prabhu Chawla
After being badgered left, right and centre online for his jetlag-inspired plagiarism, India Today editor-in-chief Aroon Purie finally gets some old-fashioned good press, courtesy the “dirty old man of Indian journalism”. Khushwant Singh uses a session on the couch with Headlines Today host Koel Purie Rinchet to throw light on her father and grandfather Vidya…
Prabhu Chawla out, M.J. Akbar in at India Today
There is change at the top of the totempole of India’s largest English newsmagazine, India Today. After several false rumours of his impending mortality as helmsman, editor Prabhu Chawla has been sent off to look after the language editions of the magazine. Author-editor-columnist M.J. Akbar has been named editorial director of India Today and the…
15 things you didn’t know about K.M. Mathew
The passing away of the doyen of Malayalam journalism, Kandathil Mammen Mathew, better known as K.M. Mathew, on Sunday has resulted in a rare outpouring of coverage, with Indian media proprietors burying their usual pettiness about competitors to salute one of their own. So much so that the news of the death of the chief…
K.M. Mathew, chief editor, Manorama, no more
sans serif records with regret the passing away of K.M. Mathew, the rubber planter who became chief editor of Malayala Manorama and founding editor of the newsweekly magazine, The Week. The end came in his residence in Kottayam this morning. Mr Mathew was 93 years old, and is survived by three sons—Mammen Mathew, Philip Mathew,…
It’s all happening in the newsmagazine space
The latest advertising campaign of the newsweekly The Week targetting Outlook*. The Cochin-based Week is a member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), while the Delhi-based Outlook along with market leader India Today are not. So The Week used figures filed by Outlook before the registrar of newspapers (RNI) for the ammunition for the…
‘The Week’ journalists win IPI, ICRC awards
The Week‘s senior correspondent Bidisha Ghosal and senior correspondent Kavitha Muralidharan have been honoured with prizes from the International Press Institute and Press Institute of India for their work—along with a full-page announcement in the latest issue of the magazine.
Good heavens, yet another Mario Garcia redesign
In a nation of a billion (plus a few hundred million) people, in the outsourcing capital of the world, Indian publishers continue to face enormous trouble in finding a designer with a pulse on local tastes to redesign their products. And the only name on the speeddial of otherwise extremely stingy proprietors—be it in the…
Everybody knows what GIEM is, who TGI India is
“Don’t magazines, newspapers have anything to claim?” is a story on “sans serif” in response to television channels constantly claiming to be one-up over the rest either in their ratings or predictions. Well, The Week, the weekly newsmagazine published by the Malayala Manorama group, has responded in a Freudian sort of way with this full-page…
A cartoon for every journo-blogger’s dashboard
Courtesy: David Horsey of Tribune Media Services Link via The Week
Laughter is best medicine if you can swallow it
Indian politicians have a tremendous sense of humour, compared to Indian film, sport, business and other celebrities who believe the media’s job is, well, advertising. They have an under-appreciated ability to take criticism on their chin and laugh it off, although states like Maharashtra have proved an exception in recent times. But will former Indian…
How come media did not spot Satyam fraud?
A requiem for Indian business journalism, in the delightfully breathless style of Juan Antonio Giner, founder-director, Innovation International Media: ‘Satyam’, meaning truth. India’s fourth largest software services provider. The darling of Hyderabad. An outsourcing company with 53,000 employees that serviced 185 of the Fortune 500 companies in 66 countries. A company which now says 50.4…
Who is giving how much in the Karnataka polls
All the electronic voting machines have been sealed in the Karnataka Elections—and so are the fates of all the opinion polls, exit polls, pre-poll surveys, post-poll surveys, and table-top surveys. This, then, is how it all looks, as projected by newspapers, magazines and TV stations.
IJR 