The national gallery of modern art (NGMA) in the capital is playing host to an exhibition by the architect Raj Rewal. And among the many works on display is Rewal’s design for the residence of the former editor of The Times of India, Sham Lal in New Delhi’s Gulmohar Park area. A true man of…
Tag Archives: ToI
Portrait of a film critic at the cash counter
At Sooni Taraporevala‘s endearing exhibition of photographs of Parsis, chronicled since 1977, the very first exhibit is of Rashid Irani. On the left is Irani last year; on the right is Irani 25 years ago. Both pictures show Irani, the working partner of Brabourne, the eponymous Irani restaurant on Princess Street in Bombay with which…
How seven cartoonists drew one TOI cartoon
As part of its dodransbicentennial celebrations, The Times of India has published “a cavalcade of cartoons over 175 years”. Titled “Jest in Time“, it is put together by Ajit Ninan, Neelabh Banerjee and Jug Suraiya. At its launch in New Delhi on Monday, seven well-known cartoonists—Sudhir Tailang from Deccan Chronicle, Manjul from Daily News and…
How The Times of India went after N. Srinivasan
ARVIND SWAMINATHAN writes from Madras: Depending on what you expect of your newspaper, either The Times of India played just the right role in the N. Srinivasan matter: proactively taking up an issue that concerns a “nation of a billion-plus”, right up to the very end, even if it did not secure the end it…
Why Times Now doesn’t share TOI’s Aman ki Asha
On its edit page today, The Times of India has provided an extraordinary explication of the guiding philosophy behind the various newspapers, radio and TV stations that are part of the Times group: federalism. Authored by Kaushik Murali and Saubhik Chakrabarti, the 926-word piece says this federalism means Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL) has…
So, how many journalists cracked CAT 2012?
Serving warm, uplifting news first thing in the morning is an integral part of The Times of India‘s sunny credo, a point which comes up over and over in presentations made its managers, and on the pages of the paper. Today, the paper serves it up by the bucketful with the story of N. Shiva…
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”…
Will Britannia pay TOI for such ‘bad news’ in ads?*
Advertising innovations on the front pages of newspapers is a work in progress. Each morning turns up something new, something scarier, something educative—and we haven’t seen the end of the beginning. Yet. Today’s Times of India is one such morning. An “innovation” on the front page of the paper has gold biscuits floating happily all…
The Ambani brothers, TOI, Medianet & paid news
The “reverse-swing” done on Zee News by Jindal Steel is one of the most intriguing media stories in recent memory. The steel company says it is suing the Subhash Chandra-owned network for Rs 200 crore for the demand of Rs 100 crore in lieu of advertisements allegedly made by its editors, Sudhir Chaudhary and Sameer…
Forget Ram Rajya, there is a new Ravana in town
On the last day of Dasara, Vijayadashmi—the day Lord Rama is rumoured to have defeated the demon-king Ravana, in newspaper parlance—The Times of India‘s chief illustrator Neelabh Banerjee presents a new ten-headed monster–from corrupt cops to cricket officials to doctors to businessmen to bureaucrats to politicians—to slay (Click to view a larger image). Also read:…
The new kid on the block announces an eclipse
The front page of Ei Bela, the new Bengali tabloid launched by the Ananda Bazaar Patrika (ABP) group in Calcutta, as a “buffer” to counter the launch of a Bengali newspaper from The Times of India group, on the day Mamata Banerjee‘s Trinamool Congress walked out of the Congress-led UPA. This is the second tabloid…
Times, Telegraph and the Bengali paper wars
A newspaper war is looming in Calcutta as The Times of India group prepares to launch a Bengali broadsheet, Ei Samay (literally, Times Now) ahead of the Puja season. Market leader Ananda Bazaar Patrika (ABP) has announced the launch of the tabloid Ei bela (literally, this moment) to protect the mothership. Saturday’s Telegraph carries a…
TOI bossman Samir Jain wants a Man Friday
Samir Jain, the scarily reclusive bossman of The Times of India group—neither seen nor heard by lesser mortals in the newsroom—makes a rare appearance on the pages of the paper, through an advertisement for an executive secretary, with a copy of his visiting card. Also read: When Samir Jain served a thali Jug Suraiya on…
Good morning, it’s time to go back to bed?
Just because 96-year-old Khushwant Singh called it the “most readable daily in the world” recently, it doesn’t mean the matter is closed and beyond debate. Far from it. The Times of India thankfully thinks just the opposite of Singh “insofaras The Hindu is concerned” in this new TV commercial for ToI‘s three-year-old Madras edition. With the punchline “Stuck…
More media options means fewer choices?
Last week, the Grammy Award winning musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt lamented that although there were over 500 television channels in the country, there was not one for classical music. The ad man cum analyst Santosh Desai joins the debate in The Times of India: Do more options actually mean more choice? We have a few…
How The Times of India pumped up Team Anna
PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: Six minutes and 20 seconds into his vote of thanks at the culmination of Anna Hazare‘s fast-unto-death last Sunday, the RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal heaped plaudits on the media for the support it had lent to the Jan Lok Pal bill agitation by “articulating the outrage of the nation”. Pointing at the…
Why the wage board is good for journalists
The recommendations of the Majithia wage board for journalists and other newspaper employees have clearly split newspaper owners and newspaper workers. The big dads of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) have rejected the recommendations, taken out advertisements, filed cases and published articles to build “public opinion”. But two small newspaper owners, both members of INS,…
Chaos, golmaal, jugaad… all in a day’s work
The television commercial for The Times of India‘s 2011 campaign theme, “A day in the life of India“. The contest, inviting readers to send in photos, videos, cartoons, and jokes and anecdotes, also saw ToI advertise on the pages of rival Hindustan Times. . The last date for entries is March 15. 2010: ToI, Jang,…
‘Bollywood journalism is about PR & pimping’
Nandita Puri, journalist and wife of actor Om Puri, in an interview in Tehelka magazine: Q: What are the biggest problems in Bollywood journalism today? A: Bollywood journalism is about PR and pimping. Of course, stars have glamours personal lives everyone wants to know about, but now that has become the core of film reportage.…
Khalid Mohamed on ToI, DNA, HT and the stars
Khalid Mohamed, longtime film critic of The Times of India and sometime editor of Filmfare—who hopped over to DNA and then to Hindustan Times in Bombay after making four films in the interim—talks about his 32 years in journalism and the stars he met along the way, in the January issue of Society magazine. #…
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