Selling the soul? Or sustaining the business?

PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: Let it be said upfront: Indian newspapers have sold their front pages to advertisers before, and The Times of India is not the first.

In 1948, India’s self-proclaimed “national newspaper”, The Hindu, reported the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on its back page, because, back then, the “Mount Road Mahavishnu” used to run ads on the front page.

In the mid-1990s, when the “Old Lady of Boribunder” ran ear panel advertisements on either side of its title, it sold both slots to a (chocolate?) advertiser who created the words “LET” and “WAIT” in the same font as the paper’s mashtead.

Result, when readers received the paper, the masthead that greeted them was “LET THE TIMES OF INDIA WAIT”.

More recently, using the front page for advertising, often by flanking the actual front page with a wraparound, has gained currency among a variety of advertisers and newspapers, including The Hindu.

And there are those who believe this is a good thing because the most important piece of real estate in a paper can draw top dollar, which can sustain newsrooms in a tight advertising market. After all, the New York Times has just started taking front page ads.

Selling the front page for advertising is one thing, but selling a newspaper’s masthead?

That’s precisely what the Delhi edition of The Times of India has done today (see image, above).

The Times often uses the masthead to create Google-style doodles, to wish readers on festivals and to create a splash  on important news days. For journalists and readers of the old school, even that may not be OK, but at least that doesn’t amount to signalling to the world that the soul of the paper is safe.

But in a step that suggests that there is nothing in the paper that cannot be bought for a price, The Times today sells its masthead to a mobile phone company, whose ad, with various arms of it creeping all over the news space, appears below on the bottom-half of the front page.

It can be argued that there is nothing wrong with monetising the masthead. Regular readers rarely look at it with a close eye and in the case of the The Times of India, readers who are used to their paper’s masthead being played around with, may not even notice.

On the other hand, sure, business is bad, but this bad?

Also read: Pyramid Saimira, Tatva & Times Private Treaties

Times Private Treaties gets a very public airing

SUCHETA DALAL: Forget the news, you can’t believe the ads either

SALIL TRIPATHI: The first casualty of a cosy deal is credibility

PAUL BECKETT: Indian media holding Indian democracy ransom

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA: ‘Indian media in deeply murky ethical territory’

The scoreline: Different strokes for different folks

Does he who pays the piper call the tune?

Does he who pays the piper call the tune?

The media is pilloried, and rightly so, for erasing the line between editorial and advertising. Space sellers are slammed, and rightly so, for allowing advertisers and agencies to run riot. And publishers and editors are pilloried, and rightly so, for not standing up and telling advertisers, agencies and space sellers where to get off.

But what when the advertiser is the government, as the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) is?

And what when the government as advertiser tries to set the editorial rules and guidelines in a tight advertising market, when it tells you how to write the article, how to do the layout, and what kind of newsprint to choose, all in the name of public awareness?

Also read: Pyramid Saimira, Tatva & Times Private Treaties

Times Private Treaties gets a very public airing

SUCHETA DALAL: Forget the news, you can’t believe the ads either

SALIL TRIPATHI: The first casualty of a cosy deal is credibility

PAUL BECKETT: Indian media holding Indian democracy ransom

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA: ‘Indian media in deeply murky ethical territory’

The scoreline: Different strokes for different folks

Old wine in very old bottle is still old wine

SHARANYA KANVILKAR writes from Bombay: The Times of India has unveiled its ‘Crest Edition‘ in Bombay and Delhi with a 40-page offering at an “introductory price” of Rs 6 per copy. (The ‘Crest Edition‘ branding is embedded below the masthead in italics.)

“Why another newspaper or magazine, you may well ask. Don’t we already have enough? To begin with, Crest isn’t really a new paper or magazine. It is The Times of India unbound, with narrative pieces that sparkle with rich reporting, great perspective and Aha! moments. We will leverage TOI’s unequalled network of correspondents, analysts, writers and editors to anticipate the changes bubbling below the surface of society as well as enhance our understanding of the world around us. Crest is for the curious mind; it hopes to be every intelligent reader’s guide to politics and policy, art and culture, environment and education, and more,” writes The Times of India’s editorial director Jaideep Bose in an introductory edit.

The new paper’s menu, self-explanatory, is as under:

The colour theme is: aquamarine with promise of ’seas unsailed and shores unhailed’.

“Aquamarine is the colour of adventure, surprise and delight. It stimulates, it excites, and it’s cool. It invokes sky, ocean and earth.”

***

All things considered, Crest, coming from the house of the world’s largest English newspaper, breaks no fresh ground and is in fact reminiscent of the Sunday edition of The Indian Express in its design and stories.

Nothing about the new paper—the price (double the regular Times‘ Saturday cover price of Rs 3), the quality of the newsprint (standard), the choice or display of stories—suggests “premium”, “lofty” or “high road”, terms used by Times in promoting its newest baby.

In fact, the tiny masthead of the new Crest edition suggests that Times, which burnt its hands with its earlier premium offerings in Bombay—The Independent and The Metropolis in Bombay—is playing it extra-safe in an uncertain advertising scenario and in markets where the perception is growing that ToI is feeling the heat from a variety of sources, including the competition, for keeping reader interest subservient to the advertiser’s.

The registration number and issue date of the Crest edition is that of the regular paper and the editors are the same as that of the regular Saturday paper (Derrick B D’Sa in Bombay market and Vikas Singh in Delhi market), suggesting that Crest far from being a new paper is just a new, souped-up edition of the old one, issued in the hope that the daily reader will graduate to the new edition over the weekend and help The Times bottomline floundering in the face of the paper’s private treaties and other misadventures.

In earlier days, newspapers had the dak (postal) edition, which was printed earlier than the City edition and mailed to faraway centres or transported over long distances by road and rail.

The Crest edition is a similar venture but legal experts in the print industry might like to look at a juicy question:

Can a newspaper with the same title, same registration number, same volume number, same issue number, and same editor be sold at different cover prices in the same City on the same day?

The RNI number for the main edition of The Times of India in Bombay on Saturday is 1547/57.

The RNI number for the Crest edition launched on Saturday is 1547/57. The volume number (CLXXII) is the same for the main edition and the Crest edition, and the issue number (227) is the same too.

So, has the Times taken a legally questionable step in publishing and selling a different edition of the paper at a different cover price?

Also read: A lofty title takes the high road at premium price

Readers take rest. Premium readers take Crest

A lofty title takes the high road at premium price

The Times of India has officially announced the name of its new, “premium”, weekend paper launching on Saturday, September 26. It is called “The Crest Edition” and will have 40 pages.

An announcement on the front page of the paper today says that like its “lofty title”, the Crest Edition will take the high road on everything from politics and business to literature, sport, culture and science.

“Crest’s got the heft but suits the hammock too.”

Half-page ads of the new paper appear on page 2 of the paper in Bombay and Delhi. (Click on the frame to get a larger, more reader-friendly view.)

Also read: Readers take rest. Premium readers take Crest

Readers take rest. Premium readers take Crest.

After weeks and months of “will they, won’t they”, The Times of India has bucked the advertising downturn and announced the launch of its “premium” weekend paper just ahead of the festival season.

This announcement appears on the front page of the paper in Bombay and Delhi, suggesting that it is initially going to be published from these two metros alone.

The announcement gives no indication of the cover price (said to be higher than the main paper) and no announcement of the title (rumoured to be Crest).

Also read: The name is Gajwani. Satyan Suresh Gajwani.

Speak out. Sign the petition. Free Maziar Bahari.

Newsweek contributor Maziar Bahari, a 42-year-old awaiting the birth of his first child, has just spent his 81st night in solitary confinement in Iran.

Ahead of Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s visit to the United States, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham makes a plea for Bahari’s freedom in The New York Times:

“If Iran wants to be taken seriously on the world stage, it needs to adhere to international standards. Journalists need to be free to report within the legal framework of the country. Foreign governments need to be granted consular access to their citizens. Prisoners need to be granted access to their lawyers, and either charged or released quickly.”

Sign the petition to free Maziar Bahari

Loans at low interest rates for photographers

It takes some chutzpah for a bank to utter the word “integrity” in the august company of AIG, Lehman Brothers, Merill Lynch and Goldman Sachs. The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) does so, but surprisingly uses the stout shoulders of the paparazzi to tell the world that it has it.

‘Univerisity offers trainings from Indian origin’

Private education—professional colleges, B-schools, deemed Universities, journalism schools, etc—is one of the most under-reported scams in the Indian media today.

This advertisement for one such J-school, which spells “University” wrongly, is a proof reader’s delight. Click on the image for a larger frame.

The lady, obviously, will have something to say

Foundation for Media Professionals

Dialogue: Undercover reporters, scam busters or abettors?

Thursday, August 20, 10.30 am to 1 pm

India International Centre, New Delhi

Partner:  Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

Journalism can’t be taught, but it can be learnt

The Indian Express group, which announced the setting up of a media school a few weeks ago under the aegies of Newschool Ventures Limited, has announced its first academic course: an 8-month programme beginning October 1.

Content sutra reports the course costs Rs 1.75 lakh.

Download the application form here

Also read: Those who can do, those who can’t teach?