How Hindu aimed at The Times but shot DNA

It is never a pretty sight when a giant wakes up after a nice, long slumber.

After snoring through the thinly veiled insinuations of The Times of India that it was a sleeping inducing newspaper, The Hindu has woken up with a jolt through three TV, super-aggressive commercials that are already airing on television channels in the South.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that while the young and ignorant reader of The Times of India fed on the 5Fs—fun, frolic, froth, fashion, and fornication—-is clearly its target, The Hindu‘s TVCs seem like a direct assault on ads issued by The Times‘ competitor in Bombay, DNA, for its city supplement, After Hours, last year.

Worse, as longtime media watchers will remember, Stay Ahead Of The Times is a cliche as punchline which several of Times‘ competitors have used, including Hindustan Times in Delhi in the mid 1990s.

Also read: Good morning, it’s time to go back to bed

Only one journalist on 109 Padma Awards’ list

For the second year in a row, there are no working journalists— i.e. those still burning the phone lines and greasing the totempole in anticipation of the big day—in the 2012 Republic Day honours’ list.

Aside from the recently deceased cartoonist Mario Miranda has been decorated with the nation’s second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan, there is only one other living journalist on the 109-name list —Vijay Dutt Shridhar of Madhya Pradesh—who gets the Padma Sri.

In 2011, too, there was nobody from the Delhi set, although a number of names had done the rounds. Only the nation’s first woman news photographer, Homai Vyarawalla, and the veteran editor, author and columnist T.J.S. George had been found fit for the honour last year.

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2008: Padma Shri VD, Padma Shri RDS and Padma Shri BD

2008: Why Rajdeep and Barkha Dutt must decline Padma Sri

2009: Third highest civilian honour for Shekhar Gupta

2010: Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria gets Padma Bhushan

2011: Padma Awards for Homai Vyarawala, T.J.S. George

2011: Did Niira Radia tapes impact journos’ Padma awards?

2011: Why Barkha Dutt needn’t return her Padma Sri

Are journalism’s best practices in your DNA?

On the eve of the nation’s 63rd Republic Day, the Bombay newspaper DNA, from the Dainik Bhaskar and Zee groups, devotes its front page to publicising its code of ethics.

Before laying out its key principles—responsibility, freedom, independence, truth and accuracy, impartiality, fair play—the code reads:

“Our Constitution, protecting freedom of expression, guarantees to the people through our press a constitutional right, and places on journalists, like us, a particular responsibility. Journalism demands of its practictioners not only industry knowledge but also the pursuit of a standard of integrity proportionate to the journalist’s singular obligation.”

Link via M.V. J. Kar

Image: courtesy DNA

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Also read: Good morning, your paper is free of paid news

ET: It’s never too late to get yourself a code of ethics

IRS sparks TOI-Mumbai vs DNA-HT battle

Is it all over for DNA in the Mumbai market?

External reading: The Mint code of ethics