How Sarojini Naidu’s son helped launch a paper

The Times of India has turned 175; its rival in Hyderabad, Deccan Chronicle, has turned 75.

Despite the travails the publicly listed company is publicly going through, Andhra Pradesh’s No.1 English daily has kicked off its 75th anniversary celebrations through 75 artists who have joined hands to pay tribute to the spirit of Hyderabad with an exhibition at the Salar Jung museum.

And on the pages of the paper, the paper’s embattled owner T. Venkatram Reddy has a short note:

The Deccan Chronicle is as integral a part of Hyderabad as the Charminar. Deccan Chronicle was conceived by three friends — a journalist Theodre La Touche, an advocate, B. R Chari and Sarojini Naidu’s son, a homeopath, M.N. Jaisoorya. They sold the idea of an “everybody’s paper” to Mr Rajagopal who supplied papers to the Nizam’s government Press. Thus was born the Deccan Chronicle in 1938.

“From those patriotism-filled pre-independence days, Deccan Chronicle has retained its position as the leading newspaper and has only grown stronger as the ‘people’s paper’.

“The expansion and modernization of Deccan Chronicle began when my father, the late T. Chandrashekhar Reddy, acquired DC in 1977. As the city changed and evolved, so did its people. And along with them changed and grew the Chronicle.”

The paper’s editor, A.T. Jayanti, writes:

“As we complete 75 fantastic years, we look forward with excitement and energy. We are ready for the learning curve that the changing technology of the ‘now’ generation will demand of us. This is a familiar challenge.

“Each time a new medium of communication has been introduced, the pundits have predicted the end of newspapers. On each occasion, we have integrated the new with the old and converted it into a win-win situation for you, the reader, by providing the latest news, views and visuals, and for us by garnering increasing readership.

“We find that the explosion of news and views on every new platform — 24×7 live TV, Internet news sites, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and online comments — has only helped make newspapers more relevant. Readers depend on newspapers to make sense of all the cacophony, filter and present the fragmented picture in a sober and fuller manner.

“TV depends on the print medium to promote its programmes. Online achievements and apps benefit from newspaper coverage. We can say with quiet pride that when something goes viral, the readers learn of it through DC.”

New Yorker carries TOI response, 7 months later

Exactly seven months after The New Yorker carried a nine-page profile of Samir Jain, Vineet Jain and The Times of India by its acclaimed media critic Ken Auletta, the magazine has carried a response from TOI’s executive editor, Arindam Sen Gupta, in its May 5 issue, on medianet, private treaties and other subsidiary issues.

Image: courtesy The New Yorker

Also read: Samir Jain, Vineet Jain & TOI in New Yorker

The Times of India and the Commonwealth Games

How The Times of India pumped up Anna Hazare

How Bengal’s chit fund crooks exposed the media

Anchors and presenters of Tara Muzik, which shut down recently, console each other on live TV (courtesy The Indian Express)

The 16th week of the year of the lord 2013 has been a gruesome one for Indian journalism in general and Bengali journalism in particular.

In the space of just a few hours every conceivable cliche and charge about modern media folk—that we are corrupt; that we can be bought over; that we have become extortionists; that we have become partners, even abettors, in crime of politicians and corporates; that the interests of the common man and woman is last on our radar; that the media is now a shield for wrong-doing—came true as an 18-page “suicide” note of a chit fund operator became public.

Willy-nilly, Sudipta Sen‘s letter to CBI also revealed how gullible we are, for all the gratuitous advice we dish out on how the world should be run.

Tens of journalists, even some stellar names from the past, joined the newspapers and TV stations started by the crooked and corrupt of Bengal, many of which have now shut shop.

In The Telegraph, Calcutta, Sajeda Momin, who covered the Babri masjid demolition for the paper, who returned from London to be the features editor of The Bengal Post, a paper which Sen started with his funny money, recounts the experience:

It was May 2010 when I received a phone call in London from a former Statesman colleague that he was helping launch a new English newspaper in Calcutta and would like me on board. I asked the normal question all journalists ask when it is a new paper: “Who is funding it?”

His reply was very reassuring. He is a Bengali businessman who has a variety of business interests in land, agro-products, travel, etc, and wants to venture into the media.

“Does he have enough money to sustain a newspaper?” was my next question as we know that keeping a daily newspaper going is a costly business with no hope of seeing any returns for a few years.

““Oh yes, he has mines in Australia, land and business interests in West Bengal and Odisha, and is looking to expand in the Northeast and has promised that he has enough money put aside to run the newspaper for the next five years,” came the reply. So I took the plunge and landed in Calcutta the following month.

Apart from Ranabir Raychoudhury, the editor of The Bengal Post, as the English paper was to be called, none among the editorial staff had met this elusive Mr Sen. Ironically, even friends in the business community knew very little about Sudipta Sen and his companies, despite his having so much money that he could fund not one but two newspapers.”

POLL: The biggest news story of last 175 years?

The Times of India, formerly known as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce, has kickstarted its 175th anniversary—its dodransbicentennial—celebrations.

Under the rubric “Leading change for 175 years”, R.K. Laxman‘s iconic dhoti-clad Man from Matunga under goes a partial makeover, with one half wearing jeans and goggles.

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On its website, ToI has launched a microsite and there is even a poll on the biggest news story of the last 175 years.

Editorial director Jaideep Bose aka JoJo has a signed piece in the paper, and there will be a full page of archival material in the paper each week for the next one year.

Writes JoJo:

“The fact that this paper has grown from a single edition of a few thousand copies to some 50 editions with a circulation of close to five million — the largest in the world for any English newspaper by a long margin — speaks of its ability to divine the ever-changing mood of this chaotic, contradictory and creative superpower-in-waiting, which lives in many centuries all at once.

“Which big brand in India (and how many globally) can claim to have been around 175 years ago and grown the way The Times of India has? We are often asked, how do you do it?

“The secret, we believe, lies in being contemporary and relevant — the “Old Lady of Boribunder” remains young at heart, nimble on her feet, and razor-sharp up there. Incredibly proud though we are of our heritage, we don’t sail solely on it, but work continually to leave behind a legacy even more iconic than the one we’ve inherited.”

When an owner passes, nothing else is news

The front page of the Tamil newspaper, Dina Thanthi (The Daily Telegraph), once India’s largest-read newspaper, the day after its proprietor, B. Sivanthi Adithyan, passed away in Madras at the age of 76.

On the bottom-half of the page is a picture of Adithyan being decorated by the then President of India, Pratibha Patil. with the Padma Sri in 2008.

Like so many compatriot-South Indian newspaper owners of his generation (think S. Rangarajan of The Hindu, think K.A. Nettakallappa of Deccan Herald), Adithyan was a passionate sports enthusiast and a major domo in sports administration.

Friends say Adithyan, a longtime functionary of the Indian Olympic Association, was a no mean trap-shooter himself.

Adithyan’s family sold the Dinakaran newspaper title to the Marans of the Sun TV group.

Also the owner of a paper mill and an evening newspaper (Malai Malar), Adithyan had recently acquired NDTV-Hindu, the hyper-local newschannel started by NDTV and The Hindu, and turned it into Thanthi TV.

On Thanthi TV (channel no. 723 on Tata Sky), the funeral procession had near-blanket coverage, in the way, say, Doordarshan covered the deaths of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi in the pre-satellite TV era.

The cortege was followed live by Thanthi TV cameras all the way to the crematorium, while every visitor was accommodated on the screen through multiple windows.

‘Karanjia, a thorough scoundrel on Shah’s payroll’

In the heyday of the Blitz, Russy Karanjia carried the reputation of a “bulldog of an editor” with aplomb.

In fact, a bulldog was the mascot of the advertisements for The Daily, the daily tabloid he launched to complement the weekend offering.

In a non-aligned, less-insular India of the 1960s and 1970s, the world’s leaders from Anwar Sadat (Egypt) to Nikita Krushchev (USSR) to Marshal Tito (Yugoslavia) gave Karanjia their time.

He met the Shah of Iran at regular intervals, those  interactions even resulting in a book, The Mind of a Monarch.

The rapport between an editor and an emperor led to comments from former Outlook* editor Vinod Mehta, a compatriot of Karanjia—and then a quick apology.

Now, secret cables from the American embassy in India, made available by Wikileaks, throw a question mark on the nature of the relationship between Karanjia and the Shah.

Below is the full text of a cable sent from New Delhi in July 1975, shortly after the proclamation of the Emergency, including press censorship, by the then Congress government of Indira Gandhi:

1. LEFTIST/RADICAL COMMIE-SUPPORTING BLITZ JULY 19 ISSUE FRONTPAGES EDITOR R.K. KARANJIA‘S INTERVIEW WITH SHAH IN WHICH KARANJIA SAYS SHAH “COMPREHENDS THE CAUSES, SOURCES AND LOGIC OF THE EMERGENCY PROCLAIMED IN INDIA AND SUPPORTS THE INDIRA GANDHI GOVERNMENT’S ACTION TO SAVE THE COUNTRY FROM BEING PARALYZED AND FRACTURED BY ANARCHY”.

KARANJIA SAYS SHAH “LIKENED THE INDIAN PRIME MINISTER’S ORDEALS IN DEALING WITH EXTREMISTS OF THE RIGHT AS WELL AS THE LEFT WITH HIS OWN EXPERIENCE DURING THE EARLIER TRAUMATIC YEARS OF HIS REIGN, WHEN ‘A DARK, UGLY AND STRANGE COMBINATION OF MULLAHS, LANDLORDS AND COMMUNISTS JOINED FOREIGN ELEMENTS IN A CONSPIRACY TO DISMEMBER AND DESTROY IRAN’.”

KARANJIA BLAMED “AMERICAN NEWS AGENCIES AND SYNDICATED TRASH” FOR THE ANTI-INDIA ARTICLES APPEARING IN IRANIAN PRESS.

2. WE HAVE BEEN PUZZLED FOR SOME TIME ABOUT THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE SHAH AND KARUNJIA AND CANNOT HELP WONDERING WHETHER SOME ILL-ADVISED IRANIAN CONSUL GENERAL IN THE PAST URGED THE SHAH TO PUT KARANJIA ON THE ROYAL PAYROLL. (emphasis added)

(WE HAVE THOUGHT FOR SOME TIME THAT MANY OF THE STAFF OF THE IRANIAN CONSULATE GENERAL IN BOMBAY ARE SAVAK RATHER THAN FOREIGN OFFICE. IN ANY CASE, THEY HAVE, AS A GENERAL RULE, BEEN IMPRESSIVELY UNIMPRESSIVE.)

WHATEVER THE EXPLANATION, IT IS GENERALLY ASSUMED HERE THAT KARANJIA IS ON THE SHAH’S PAYROLL. SHAH’S INTEREST IN THE LARGE PARSEE AND IRANIAN COMMUNITIES IN THIS PART OF INDIA MIGHT, IN HIS MIND, SERVE AS RATIONALE FOR A FRIENDLY PAPER, EVEN IF IT IS BLITZ. (emphasis added)

3. EVEN ADMITTING THE SHAH’S DESIRE FOR A FRIENDLY PRESS HERE, WE WONDER IF HE KNOWS WHAT A THOROUGH-GOING SCOUNDREL KARANJIA IS. KARANJIA IS THE ANTITHESIS OF EVERYTHING THE SHAH HIMSELF STANDS FOR AND THE SHAH GIVES HIM UNDESERVED RESPECTABILITY BY RECEIVING HIM IN TEHRAN AND GIVING HIM EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN IS THAT THE SHAH DOES HIS OWN IMAGE NO GOOD BY ASSOCIATING WITH THE LIKES OF KARANJIA. (emphasis added)

 4. WE DO NOT MEAN TO IMPLY THAT THERE MAY NOT BE SKELETONS IN THE ROYAL CLOSET IN TEHRAN, BUT WE THINK THE SHAH’S CONTINUED CONNECTION WITH KARANJIA MIGHT AT ONE POINT PROVE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE. THE ALLEGED CIA INVOLVEMENT IN MOSSADEGH’S OVERTHROW WOULD, AT FIRST GLANCE, SEEM TO MAKE ANY CONNECTION BETWEEN THE SHAH AND KARANJIA IMPOSSIBLE WHEN IT IS REMEMBERED THAT CIA IS ONE OF BLITZ’S MOST CONSISTENT TARGETS, PARTICULARLY NOW.

5. KARANJIA IS PRESENTLY EMBARKED ON A CAMPAIGN TO WHIP UP SUPPORT FOR MRS GANDHI, AND HIS STOP IN TEHRAN OBVIOUSLY PAID OFF. THE KARANJIA INTERVIEW WITH THE SHAH WAS PICKED UP BY UNI AND CARRIED IN THE JULY 18 TIMES OF INDIA UNDER THE HEADING “SHAH JUSTIFIES EMERGENCY STEPS BY INDIRA”. WE CAN’T HELP WONDERING IF THE SHAH REALIZED THIS WOULD HAPPEN AND IF HE KNOWS JUST WHAT HE’S BITTEN OFF IN KARANJIA.

* Disclosures apply

Photograph: courtesy Arab News

Also read: Why Ayub Syed took two empty suitcases to Libya

It isn’t easy to tell tales of even dead editors

Sudheendra Kulkarni: ‘A courageous, committed editor’

External reading: P. Sainath on Russy Karanjia

BCCI’s 8-point list of media don’ts for IPL

Giving the kind of brand equity cricket commands, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has been majestically proactive in protecting its rights (and the rights of rights holders) over the game.

Result: representatives of Cricinfo, which is now owned by ESPN, cannot file from the press box and have to watch the match from the stands, because the rights are with Star.

Result: news agencies routinely boycott coverage of matches, especially by way of pictures.

Result: a legend like Jim Maxwell of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) skipped the recent series because ABC didn’t have the rights.

With the Indian Premier League (IPL) around the corner, BCCI’s legal representatives (operating from the safe confines of a post office box number in Bangalore) have shot off letters to print organisations on the use of logos, trademarks, word marks and other “proprietary content”.

The eight-point list of don’ts is revealing:

Please be informed that, without license, your publication/s may not:

i.  use any or all of the IPL Names, IPL Marks and IPL Proprietary Content in conjunction with any advertisement, message, name, logo, trade mark or word mark of any third party;

ii. publish any article, match synopsis, match review, or snap-shot relating to the Pepsi IPL or any previous IPL seasons that uses any or all of the IPL Names, IPL Marks and IPL Proprietary Content in conjunction with any  unlicensed advertisement, message, name, logo, trade mark or word mark of a third party,

iii. publish any photograph that relates to the Pepsi IPL or any previous seasons of the IPL that is sponsored by any third party, or contain catchphrases that refer to any third party (e.g, “Entity A’ Moment of the Match”),

iv. publish third party sponsored or presented score-cards of Pepsi IPL matches,

v. publish third party sponsored capsules or tables containing fixtures, timings and/or venue details of Pepsi IPL matches,

vi. publish any syndicated column that displays any or all of the IPL Names, IPL Marks and IPL Proprietary Content and displays the name, trade mark, word mark logo of any commercial or non-commercial entity/entities,

vii. publish a special page, section or supplement relating to Pepsi IPL that displays any or all of the IPL Names, IPL Marks, and IPL Proprietary Content in conjunction with any advertisement, message, name, logo, trade mark or word mark of a third party, or

viii. publish still images by altering or deliberately removing, replacing or obscuring any logo of a sponsor of the BCCI-IPL, a participating team or a participating player;

Also read: How journalists are aiding the decadent IPL

Why the watchdogs didn’t bark during IPL loot

Why a unique newspaper isn’t covering the IPL

How come no one saw IPL cookie crumbling

The Times of India, India Times and IPL-4

How the Press Council of India took shape

As the fulminations of the chairman of the Press Council of India, Justce Markandey Katju, swing from the ludicrous to the ridiculous, time to look at the day—50 years ago—the PCI took seed, not for its quixotic chief to plead for a convict’s sentence to be commuted or for a sovereign nation to be declared fake, but for the high ideals of the media to be protected.

From The Hindu, dated 23 March 1963:

“A Bill to set up the Press Council will be introduced in the next session of Parliament, said B. Gopala Reddi, Minister for Information and Broadcasting, in the Lok Sabha. Considering the various problems facing the Press, he was convinced that there was no use in delaying the constitution of the Press Council.

“In his reply to the demands for grants for his Ministry, Gopala Reddi said that as soon as legislation for setting up the Press Council was passed, steps would be taken to constitute it. It would go into the various aspects of the Press like, monopoly tendencies, status of the editor, and other matters as envisaged in the report of the Press Commission.

“He pointed out that it had been agreed generally by the members of the Congress Party, the opposition members, and the Government that the powers of the Press should not be in the hands of a few persons. But the questions connected with the functioning of the Press in the country were of a legal and constitutional nature and should be dealt with by the Press Council.”

ET’s advice to media: move on, let go

As a wave of earnestness sweeps across newsrooms over the Delhi gangrape, The Economic Times strikes a blow against the emerging political correctness:

“The media, the general press especially, must recognise that neither public purpose nor journalistic remit is being served by what sometimes appears to be a predetermined decision to find a ‘Nirbhaya headline’. Two unwelcome consequences follow whenever the media refuses to let go and move on in such situations. One, the lack of broader relevance of such stories becomes painfully apparent.

“Two, such stories begin, even if unwittingly, to trivialise the memory of the person and invade the privacy of those who loved her most. When such consequences become apparent, and they clearly are now, the media must self-correct . The bigger lesson here, one that the media should always remember , is that public discourse is inherently dynamic and many-layered.

“Changes, shifts, variety and multiplicity are its defining attributes. No single story, no single newsmaker, no single tragedy or triumph can really define public discourse. Therefore, efforts to impose a single narrative – no matter how well-intentioned – will always seem contrived. The sooner the general press realises this, the better it is for everyone and everything, not least the memory of Nirbhaya.”

Read the full editorial: ‘Media mustn’t force headlines’

The Afzal Guru front page Kashmiris didn’t see

The front-page of the English daily newspaper, Kashmir Reader, on February 10, the day after the Parliament attack convict, Afzal Guru, was suddenly hanged in Delhi.

This newspaper, like all others in the valley didn’t see the light of day because of a “gag” on the media, which the State’s chief minister Omar Abdullah denies was ever imposed.

However, the Daily Exclesior reports:

“The publishers of the Kashmir Images, Chattan and Kashmir Reader had said that Police seized their newspapers on Sunday while the printer and publisher of Greater Kashmir had said that police had asked them not to publish the newspaper. This forced the newspapers to suspend their publications. The Government also didn’t issue any curfew passes to the media that curbed the movement of journalists.”