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.”
That’s the finding, if you believe that kind of thing, of Career Cast, an American human resource consultancy firm. On its website, the researcher lists low pay, stress, etc as the causes.
The study said:
“…(News reporting) has lost its lustre dramatically over the past five years and is expected to plummet even further by 2020.”
News reporters are ranked at No. 200, photojournalists are only slightly better at 188. But look at the bright side: none of the other 199 “better” professions than ours can report this piece of news.
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.”
From the gossip columns of Pune Mirror, glad tidings on former CNBC TV18 and current ET Now anchor, Ayesha Faridi:
“Marriage bells are ringing for Dilip and Manali Vengsarkar’s son Nakul. Your diarist has learnt that the 31-year-old architect and interior designer will be tying the knot with TV anchor Ayesha Faridi on April 27.
“The cricket legend’s only son had earlier been engaged to marry Swapnali, daughter of real estate baron Avinash Bhosle, but the alliance was called off in circumstances that remain shrouded in mystery to this day….
“However, we gather that Nakul secretly started dating Ayesha around two years ago when she was working in Mumbai and the relationship went from strength to strength even after she relocated to Delhi to take up a fresh assignment.
“The engagement, which took place some months ago with the blessings of their families, was a low key affair. Though the marriage will be solemnised in Delhi, the Vengsarkars are gearing up to host a grand reception in Mumbai.”
The BJP leader Arun Jaitley is widely speculated to contest the next general elections from Amritsar, causing much grief to the three-time sitting BJP MP Navjot Singh Sidhu. And as naturally as night follows day, newspapers and news agencies show that the schmoozing has begun in right earnest.
What can two photojournalists with enviable CVs do when the bug to do something away from the straight and narrow of daily and weekly deadlines, bites them?
T. Narayan and Sanjay Sharma provide some inspiration to their kinsmen with a photography workshop 10,122 feet above sea level.
The first batch will be held from April 25-28, the second from May 16-19. For further details, call Narayan on 08826212122 or Sanjay on 09811083888. Email: tnssphotography@gmail.com
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.
Thirteen out of India Today magazine’s 2013 ranking of the 50 most powerful people in India have interests in the media, but only two of them (former Indian Express editor Arun Shourie, Times Now editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami, Indian Expresseditor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta) are pure-play journalists.
The chairman of the press council of India, Justice Markandey Katju, is a new entry at No. 50, just as Gupta is at No. 45, Hindustan Times bosswoman Shobhana Bhartia at No. 39 and Star India CEO Uday Shankar at No. 26.
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No. 1: Mukesh Ambani, chairman, Reliance Industries and “virtual owner” of TV18 (up from No. 3 in 2012)
No. 4: Kumaramangalam Birla, chairman Aditya Birla group, and 27.5% stake holder in Living Media (up from No. 5): “sings Hindi film songs, although only in close family circles”
No. 28: Kalanidhi Maran, chairman and MD of Sun Group (up from 49 last year)
No. 31: Mahendra Mohan Gupta and Sanjay Gupta, chairman and CEO, Dainik Jagran (No. 31 last year)
No. 35: Subhash Chandra, chairman, Zee television and DNA (No. 35 last year)
No. 39: Shobhana Bhartia, chairman and editorial director, HT Media (new entry): Her home in Friends Colony (West) in Delhi was acquired from the erstwhile royal family of Jind.
No. 50: Justice Markandey Katju, chairman, press council of India (new entry): The Ph.D. in Sanskrit asked Lucknow lawyer S.K. Kalia who entred his court, ‘Ab tera kya hoga Kalia‘?
For all the talk about the future being digital, the truth is no Indian newspaper or magazine (or website) is making money at the speed and in the quantum that publishers and promoters feel they are entitled to.
Worse, no Indian newspaper or magazine (or website) has been able to generate the kind of content that readers won’t find elsewhere and will therefore pay to read.
Publishers are still groping around for a revenue model for charging online content. The Times of India is apparently inclined to but will only do so with Hindustan Times also on board.
Notwithstanding all this, Money Life, the personal finance magazine launched by the journalists Sucheta Dalal and Debashis Basu has gone full steam ahead.
A Rs 780 annual subscription gives copies of the print magazine, access to the website and web content, including the archives from 2006, daily and weekly newsletters of news and views, and membership of the magazines initiatives. There is also a monthly pass for Rs 99.
The front page of the launch issue of Qaumi Salamati (National Security), the Urdu newspaper re-launched by S.M.A. Kazmi, the journalist who was arrested and jailed last year for his alleged involvement in a plot to blow up an Israeli diplomatic car in New Delhi. He is currently out on bail after eight months of incarceration.
Published from a swish Nizamuddin (East) address in the capital, the broadsheet 12-page daily (printed, published and owned by Siraj Pracha) is priced at two rupees. The headline of a front-page editorial, which occupies the bottom half of the page, reads: “Love for all, hatred for none.”
The lead story on day one was the earthquake which struck Iran and parts of Pakistan, with its reverberations being felt in Delhi. Among those present at the launch, India’s top Shia cleric Syed Kalbe Jawad and agro-industrialist Sirajuddin Qureshi, who was invited by US president Barack Obama for a 2010 meeting of global Muslim businessmen.
Editorial director 
