Vijay Sankeshwar, the transport operator who founded Vijaya Karnataka and Vijaya Vani, shocking the Deccan Herald group and The Times of India group respectively, has offered his sage advice on how to combat #Coronavirus. Dripping with desi and swadeshi, the advice, although well intentioned, is questionable for its science. Sankeshwar, who was awarded the Padma…
Tag Archives: Vijaya Karnataka
“Selfless samaritan. Voice of the poor. Striding for the masses. Voice of the voiceless”: How Kannada newspapers have torn apart the wall between editorial and advertising to generate revenue in COVID season
*** Desperate situations call for desperate solutions, and Kannada newspapers are leaving no stone unturned to find their way out of the severe financial squeeze prompted by the COVID pandemic and the continuing lockdown. With corporate and retail advertising all but dead, with government ads few and far between, with distribution still not completely back…
A Hindu bomber detonates the Mangalore ‘bomb’ in the face of Kannada news media. And a newspaper suggests mental tests and medical treatment for the ‘real terrorists’: embedded editors, owners and TV anchors.
Karnataka is the outlier in peninsular India—the only state in the South that the BJP has managed to come to power, by hook and by crook. Twice. There is a plethora of political reasons for this, including caste realignment, but there can be little doubt that the Kannada media has played a hands-on role in…
Kannada University postpones silver jubilee event after students and teachers object to the ‘consistent misogyny’ of an invitee: a right-wing newspaper Editor
The valedictory function of the silver jubilee of Kannada University—a University set up in Hampi in Karnataka 25 years ago to celebrate the state’s language—has been abruptly postponed following protests over the participation of a newspaper Editor. The event, scheduled for January 31 and February 1, was put off after students and professors objected…
Megaphone for Megalomaniac: How a high-school essay without one original thought made it to every edit page today
The demise of the editorial page as the voice and conscience of a newspaper is much lamented by the thinking class. But we in the journalism business have ourselves to blame for devaluing it by publishing tripe. On the eve of the unveiling of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel‘s statue, the prime minister’s office sent out a high-school…
When NaMo joins hands with a journo, it’s news
The BJP’s “prime ministerial candidate” Narendra Modi has, at best, enjoyed a tenuous relationship with the media and media professionals. Although media houses which he spurned are now eating out of his hands, the Gujarat chief minister continues to be generally more comfortable with owners, whom he gives helicopter rides or calls on personally while…
When a mainstream newspaper debates ‘caste’
Do caste experiences and untouchability really exist in India, particularly in urban and middle-class India? The answer depends on who you ask although the usual newsroom tendency is to turn the nose away. So, how do we find out beyond what we think we know? In the first half of 2013, the mass-circulated Kannada newspaper…
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”…
Anti-minority bias behind foiled bid on journos?
For the second day running, most newspapers in Bangalore refrain from naming the editor, columnist and newspaper publisher who were allegedly the target of a failed assassination attempt, “masterminded”, according to the police, by a reporter working with the Bangalore-based Deccan Herald. (The first information report (FIR) filed on the arrests names the three targets:…
Bangalore journo in plot to kill editor, columnist?
A reporter of the Bangalore-based Deccan Herald has been arrested, along with 10 others, allegedly for links with “global terror outfits”, and the police have claimed that the group planned, among others, to assassinate an editor and a columnist, and the publisher of the newspaper they were earlier employed in. The journalist—Muthi-ur-Rahman Siddiqui, 26 (in…
Sugata Raju is new editor of ‘Vijaya Karnataka’
Vijaya Karnataka, the Kannada daily from The Times of India group, has a new editor: Sugata Srinivasaraju, the former associate editor, south, of Outlook* magazine. He takes over from Vasant Nadiger who was officiating as editor following the sudden death of E. Raghavan in March. Raghavan had taken over VK from the paper’s longstanding editor…
ToI group in squabble over Kannada paper title
PALINI R. SWAMY writes from Bangalore: A first-generation newspaper promoter launches a newspaper with his first name as part of the title. After a few years, he sells the now well-established newspaper to a well-established newspaper group. The new owners (neither of whom share the original promoter’s surname) continue to publish the newspaper in its…
Ex-TOI, ET editor E. Raghavan passes away
sans serif records with deep regret the passing away of Ethiraj Raghavan, an Indian Express stringer who rose to be Editor of the largest selling Kannada daily newspaper, Vijaya Karnataka, in Bangalore on Saturday. He was 61 years old, and is survived his wife Kumuda and their daughter Swathi. After stints with the Express in…
A new editor for Udayavani. New editions next?
Udayavani, the Kannada daily published by the Pais of Manipal, has a new editor from today: Ravi Hegde. Hegde, former editor of the Rajeev Chandrasekhar-owned 24×7 Kannada news channel Suvarna News, joins the paper published from Bangalore, Mangalore and Bombay at a time of great churning in the Kannada media. He has been designed group…
Vishweshwar Bhat, new editor of Kannada Prabha
Vishweshwar Bhat, the former editor of the mass-circulation Vijaya Karnataka belonging to The Times of India group, has joined the State’s fourth largest paper, Kannada Prabha, as editor-in-chief, in a move that is likely to shake up the Kannada newspaper market in more ways than one. Bhat was introduced to the editorial staff and management…
Vishweshwar Bhat quits Vijaya Karnataka
Vishweshwar Bhat, the popular yet controversial editor of Vijaya Karnataka, the mass-circulation Kannada daily owned by The Times of India group, has resigned. Bhat’s decision was announced to his staff this afternoon after a meeting with ToI chief executive officer Ravi Dhariwal and chief marketing officer Rahul Kansal who had flown down to Bangalore. Bhat…
A blank editorial, a black editorial & a footnote
When Indira Gandhi introduced media censorship as part of the Emergency in 1975, Indian newspapers ran blank editorials as a form of protest. The Kannada newspaper Vijaya Karnataka, belonging to The Times of India group, runs a blank (and black) editorial today, in protest against what happened in the State legislative assembly on Monday, during…
‘Vijaya Next’ editor Deepak Thimaya resigns?
PRITAM SENGUPTA in New Delhi and PALINI R. SWAMY in Bangalore write: Vijaya Next, the weekly Kannada newspaper launched by The Times of India group for the “upwardly mobile Kannadiga population”, is said to be looking for a new editor, just three weeks after the paper hit the stands. Sources at Times House on Bahadur…
‘Vijaya Next’ gives ToI Crest a Kannada avatar
PALINI R. SWAMY writes from Bangalore: The Times of India group has unveiled its latest product in Bangalore: Vijaya Next, a broadsheet, all-colour, Kannada weekly for the “upwardly mobile Kannadiga population“. The 24-page Friday offering, priced at Rs 6, is a customised version of the Crest edition of The Times of India, complete with shades…
Rajeev Chandrasekhar eyeing ‘Kannada Prabha’?
PALINI R. SWAMY writes from Bangalore: Bangalore’s media circles are abuzz with rumours that Kannada Prabha, the struggling Kannada newspaper owned by the New Indian Express group, is being eyed by the Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who also owns the 24×7 Kannada news channel Suvarna News. Obviously, there are no confirmations or denials of…
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