On its edit page today, The Times of India has provided an extraordinary explication of the guiding philosophy behind the various newspapers, radio and TV stations that are part of the Times group: federalism.
Authored by Kaushik Murali and Saubhik Chakrabarti, the 926-word piece says this federalism means Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL) has no “house view or line”: its many publications are free to do what they want.
This allows them to evolve, in different ways, with different views, approaches, at different paces, and in response to different challenges and consumer needs.
“To illustrate, if TOI were to be considered the main BCCL publication, many times the Navbharat Times‘ coverage may be opposite of TOI‘s.
“The entire format and design of city-specific local newspapers like Mumbai Mirror will always be different from that of TOI‘s, TOI Crest will have a different style of journalism to TOI‘s and NBT is sometimes found to be running editorials with a headline that proudly proclaims “TOI ke virudh“!
“In fact, much to the consternation of many, Times Now anchors are seen fulminating against Pakistan, sometimes on the same day as TOI carries the Aman ki Asha campaign! Essentially, then, all newspapers within the group have the freedom to have entirely opposing viewpoints — unparalleled pluralism — on the same topic.”
The capital ‘I’ doesn’t appear on the pages of The Times of India, not on the edit page, not on the commentary page. That’s one way of keeping commentators from preening in the first-person.
And that’s by order from the very top.
But as the paper turns 175 and launches the ‘I Lead India‘ campaign in association with Maruti Suzuki, the dreaded ‘I’ returns, in ads, in hoardings, and in BCCL chief marketing officer Rahul Kansal‘s opening essay.
Serving warm, uplifting news first thing in the morning is an integral part of The Times of India‘s sunny credo, a point which comes up over and over in presentations made its managers, and on the pages of the paper.
Today, the paper serves it up by the bucketful with the story of N. Shiva Kumar, a newspaper vendor in Bangalore—the son of an illiterate mother and a truck driver—who has cracked CAT 2012 and is headed to the Indian institute of management, Calcutta, as a student.
“Shiva Kumar found an opportunity to be a vendor and started his own agency when in Class 10. “I’d learnt the tricks of the trade by then. My vendor had some 50 extra copies to sell and I took them from him. That’s how I started,” he said. The 50 copies have now grown to 500.
“After school, I would take my cycle and identify new buildings and residents. I would approach them for business and ensured the papers reached before 6am. I had my own targets for a month,” he explained his marketing tactics. He still delivers the paper along with four of his delivery boys.”
The story is the second lead in the Bangalore edition of TOI; it is the bottom anchor in Bombay and Delhi.
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.
“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.”
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.”
Since its sesquicentennial 25 years ago, under bossman Samir Jain’s helmsmanship, The Times of India has pioneered several editorial and marketing “initiatives”, all of which are scorned at first by the competition and then quietly copied.
On the eve of its dodransbicentennial, after brother Vineet Jaintold The New Yorker last year that he was in the advertising business not news business, ToI has run this ad printed the right side up and uʍop ǝpısdn pǝʇuıɹd sʍǝu ǝɥʇ.
So, whose interests come first for the newspaper, the advertiser’s or the reader’s, is not difficult to guess.
ToI CEO Ravi Dhariwal told the South Asia Media Summit in Islamabad recently that the paper’s readers actually welcomed such innovations and looked forward to it: “The reader wants change.”
The bumper 318-page eighth anniversary issue of Impact, the media magazine from Anurag Batra‘s exchange4media group, features dozens of print, electronic, digital and radio professionals recounting their personal stories.
In August 2007, Sanjay Dutt was being moved from Arthur Road jail to Yerawada jail in Poona and we were following it keenly. Everybody was in the middle of this crazy chase, looking desperately for a shot, a sound byte, a picture….
In the midst of it all, I received a phone call from a viewer in Bangalore who said that he had been following my career and Times Now for a long time, but he wouldn’t do it anymore.
I was very surprised and asked him why he felt that way.
The person said he had a friend, a colonel in the Indian Army named Vasanth Venugopal, who had died fighting on the border. His body was being brought back to Bangalore but not a single news channel was bothered, so busy they were covering Sanjay Dutt.
There wasn’t even a mention of this martyr on any channel, while Dutt was being covered like there was nothing else happening in the world.
I was very upset and felt very guilty.
I told the gentleman that we would send a cameraman and get pictures of the cremation and do a story on it. That night, after we had done the story, I requested this gentleman and come and talk about his friend.
When I started my programme, and asked the producer whether the person had come, he said, ‘She is here.’
I told him I was expecting a gentleman, not a lady.
The producer replied, “Colonel Vasanth’s wife has come.”
Subhashini Vasanth had witnessed the last rites of her husband barely four hours back, yet she came to our studio.
Nothing has ever moved me as much as what she said that day.
She spoke about her family and her husband’s martyrdom, making me realise that journalism can sometimes lose its way and that we have an obligation to our viewers that goes beyond the narrow perspective of covering a movie star.
Since then, the way we cover the armed forces, internal security, issues relating to Pakistan is far more detailed than any other channel. That incident shaped the work that we do now.
Advertising innovations on the front pages of newspapers is a work in progress. Each morning turns up something new, something scarier, something educative—and we haven’t seen the end of the beginning. Yet.
Today’s Times of India is one such morning.
An “innovation” on the front page of the paper has gold biscuits floating happily all over the front page to promote a gold coin scheme for customers to mark the 125th anniversary of Britannia.
Advertisers usually like to be in a “happy ambience”, but even their deep pockets cannot control the flow of news.
In Delhi, the glad tidings pop out of a news item announcing Taliban revenge for the execution of Ajmal Kasab. In Bombay, it brings a smile on readers looking at a double murder (and a suicide that wasn’t). In Bangalore, good fortune smiles on MBA students going abegging. And in Calcutta, it fills up the pocket of a commando who hasn’t got his due.
Have a Good Day.
Hat-tip: Naresh Fernandes
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* Offer valid till 31 December 2012. Good Day biscuits also available without this offer. Terms and conditions apply.
In turn, Zee says it will sue Jindal Steel for Rs 150 crore for defaming the network by holding a press conference, releasing a CD containing video evidence of the reverse-sting, and making allegations of extortion against it and its editorial staff.
Meanwhile, The Times of India group, whose business paper The Economic Times and its advertorial supplements like Bombay Times and Delhi Times, were happily mentioned in passing by Chaudhary and Ahluwalia as indulging in “paid news” in the Jindal “reverse-sting” says Zee will hear from them.
Not surprisingly, Times CEO Ravi Dhariwal was on the mat at a CII event on Monday, with Amit Khanna of Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Entertainment saying his company had been asked to approach Medianet by TOI for coverage of an film festival.
The last bit of news, published in the gossip column of the Indian Express on Tuesday, has been happily reproduced by First Post, whose parent organisation TV 18 is now part of the Mukesh Ambani group, as evidence of the “media-corporate war”.
Editorial director 
