*** “In the first year of his prime ministership, Rajiv Gandhi was easily accessible to the press and gave candid, free-wheeling interviews. By the second year the candour was beginning to wear thin. And by the time the scandals surrounding his friends and the regime surfaced, he had retreated into his shell.” Thus begins…
Tag Archives: Vir Sanghvi
The ‘Sunday’ magazine sub-editor who secretly cooked her way to become the best known Indian chef in the world, after Gaggan Anand (if you believe food critics, that is)
In the Hindustan Times magazine supplement, Brunch, the food writer Vir Sanghvi writes about Asma Khan, the former Sunday magazine journalist whose hashtag could well be #SubKaChaatSubKaVikas. (Sunday, launched by the Ananda Bazaar Patrika group, is now defunct. M.J. Akbar was its first editor.) Writes Sanghvi: “It is a funny feeling when a colleague from decades…
‘Tarun Tejpal was trapped in a skin not his own’
Former Outlook* publisher, Maheshwar Peri, who now runs Pathfinder Media, the magazine company which publishes Careers 360, on his friend and former colleague Tarun J. Tejpal**. *** By MAHESH PERI The stupidity of our nation gets greatly exposed with the extreme reactions to Tarun J. Tejpal—the cult following of his journalism at one end, and…
The Editor who declined the Padma Bhushan
Today, 3 November 2013, is the birth centenary of Nikhil Chakravartty, the “barefoot reporter” who founded the journal Mainstream. NC or Nikhilda, as most who knew him called him, plunged into active journalism as a special correspondent with the Communist Party organ People’s War (1944-46) and People’s Age (1946-48), and later Crossroads (1952-55) and New…
When an editor draws a cartoon, it’s news
Indian print editors have done book reviews (Sham Lal, Times of India), film reviews (Vinod Mehta, Debonair), food reviews (Vir Sanghvi, Hindustan Times), music reviews (Chandan Mitra, TOI, Pioneer, The Sunday Observer; Sanjoy Narayan, Hindustan Times), elephant polo reviews (Suman Dubey, India Today) etc, but few have done cartoons. When The Telegraph, Calcutta, was launched…
Bangalore reporter who became a ‘RAW agent’
In Lounge, the weekend section of the business paper Mint, the columnist Aakar Patel doffs his hat to Prakash Belawadi, the Bangalore engineer who became an Indian Express reporter, who became a magazine correspondent, who became a television chat show host, who launched a journalism school, who launched a weekly newspaper… Who made a national-award…
Vir Sanghvi, Modi, 1984 and Hindustan Times
In the latest issue of Open magazine, its political editor Hartosh Singh Bal writes on the re-appearance of former Hindustan Times editor Vir Sanghvi on the pages of the newspaper, to underline the the media’s janus-faced approach to the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984 under Congress watch and the 2002 Gujarat riots under BJP rule: “Narendra…
Vir Sanghvi clarifies on Caravan profile of Arnab
In its new avatar, Caravan magazine doesn’t have space for letters to the editor. But in the January 2013 issue, the contributors’ page contains a response from Vir Sanghvi, the former editor of Hindustan Times, on the profile of Times Now editor-in-chief Arnab Gowsami in the last issue of 2012. An error seems to have…
All the news that is fit to cook, serve and eat
Although his reputation as a political journalist lies in tatters after the Niira Radia tapes, Vir Sanghvi is still a marquee food name in the Hindustan Times‘ Sunday magazine, Brunch. When not reporting for his paper’s hunger project, former HT managing editor Samar Halarnkar whips up a food column in the business daily Mint, titled…
Vir Sanghvi says his HT column will resume soon
After gripping the nation’s attention for nearly a year, the Niira Radia tapes that brought the politics-business-media nexus into sharp focus, is now on a slow but screechy rewind. The lobbyist Radia has shut shop; arrested politicians (Kanimozhi) are on the way out of jail; the corporate bosses and business executives have secured bail; the…
When a paper announces a new editor, it is news
The appointment and removal of editors in Indian newspapers is an opaque affair, shrouded in mystery, secrecy and intrigue. It is as if the maaliks and managements have all convinced themselves that they owe no obligation whatsoever to inform the reading, viewing, surfing, shareholding public as to why editor X has been replaced by editor…
Tiger Pataudi’s parting shot for the media
A day after the passing of Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, The Telegraph has reprinted a 1995 interview with the former cricket captain, who also did a stint as editor of Sportsworld, the now-defunct magazine from the Ananda Bazaar Patrika group that owns The Telegraph. The interviewer is Salman Khurshid, the current Union law minister, whose…
Should ‘media corruption’ come under Lokpal?
The more-than-just-a-neutral-observer position taken by sections of the media on the Anna Hazare agitation has clearly begun to rile politicians, and at least two of them cutting across party lines have argued in the last couple of days that the media too must be brought under the purview of the proposed anti-corruption legislation. Exhibit A:Â Union…
After Athreya and Kautilya, enter “Chanakya”
Six months after Vir Sanghvi said he had “suspended” his weekly column Counterpoint, in the wake of the Niira Radia tapes that had him dictating his weekly output to the 2G scam-tainted lobbyist for her approval, the Hindustan Times has announced a new column in the slot occupied by Sanghvi’s. The byline: “Chanakya“. In the…
Shekhar Gupta on journalists in Radia tapes
The May issue of the men’s fashion magazine, GQ (for Gentleman’s Quarterly), has a six-page interview with Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of The Indian Express and host of the NDTV 24×7 interview programme Walk the Talk. In a cover-mention titled “Is the Indian Express running out of steam?”, Gupta takes questions from the adman-columnist Anil Thakraney…
What Niira Radia told PAC on Barkha Dutt chat
The 21-member public accounts committee (PAC), which probed the 2G spectrum allocation scam and finalised its draft report in a hurry, has gone into a tailspin with the draft report being rejected 11-10 and the Congress members charging the chairman, Murli Manohar Joshi, of leaking the report. Tehelka magazine has put up the PAC draft…
Scribe says tribe crossed line in Niira Radia tapes
Several print and television journalists found their voices on the Niira Radia tapes. Some expressed remorse at such a cosy relationship with the lobbyist; some like you-know-who brazened it out. Now, The Hindu reports that one senior unnamed scribe who was caught on tape lobbying has candidly admitted that what they did was “utterly unprofessional”.…
‘Indians trust magazines* more than newspapers’
Trust in the Indian media is down sharply by 15 percentage points over the last two years. One out of every two Indians distrusts what they read, see, and listen but—surprise, surprise, OK, no surprise, no surprise!—trust in magazines* is higher than for newspapers, TV news or radio. These, in short, are the major highlights…
Vir Sanghvi & Barkha Dutt: “We were targeted”
Society, the monthly lifestyle magazine of the Magna group owned by Nari Hira, has a cover story on Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt in its January 2011 issue. For the first time, the two journalists most affected by the Niira Radia tapes, appear on the same platform. In his 3-page interview, Sanghvi states: “I am…
CNN-IBN in row over “fake” Twitter comments
Every single media implosion in recent months—be it Barkha Dutt‘s response to criticism of her 26/11 coverage or her response to the Niira Radia tapes, or Rajdeep Sardesai‘s defence of Vir Sanghvi and Dutt as president of the editors’ guild—has only underlined how cut off old media is from the new and how it is…
IJR 