‘Regional TV better than English news channels’

Malvika Singh, the publisher of Seminar magazine, in The Telegraph, Calcutta:

“A pathetic scam that is plaguing the Indian Premier League has been making headlines for days, as though nothing else of any importance is happening in India. The media has been grossly irresponsible in this regard. This has not only made public discourse mediocre, but the truth has been systematically blotted out from news and reportage.

“How news is reported and presented is governed by higher powers and personal leanings. Half-baked news stories, a foggy truth and self-promotion come together, causing disaster.

“The electronic media — particularly the English language channels — report much like local city channels do in the United States of America, where even the slightest of things makes headlines. Ironically, the quality of news on the regional language channels and the state channels is better; it is far more cohesive and centred around real and dominating socio-economic and political issues.

“On TV channels, the same boring, predictable faces spout their personal views and positions with abandon, collect their performance fees, and go home. Outside broadcast vans have been known to arrive at private dinners to get a ‘bite’ from people who are guests at another person’s house, thereby rudely disrupting the get-together for the other people present there.

“There is something utterly ugly about this kind of uncultured, uncivilized and unabashed self-promotion. On the superficial social circuit in the capital, such television appearances titillate the performers more than the audience.”

Photograph: courtesy The Indian Express

Read the full article: Service by the people

Also read: ‘Indian TV is like a nautanki, a real soap opera’

They also serve who sort, insert and distribute

In the Bangalore neighbourhood of Ulsoor, newspaper vendors slip pamphlets, flyers and other materials into the Sunday papers before heading off to doo-deliver them.

Photograph: M.S. Gopal/ Mumbai Paused

Also read: So, how many journos cracked CAT 2012?

Every picture tells a tale. Babu‘s tells a tome

When Chamundi betta relocates to amchi Mumbai

Now, NewsX says it is the ‘No.1 English channel’

If our TV stations cannot even put out numbers of their viewership which have a faint whiff of credibility, can they real put out news and views that news consumers can trust and believe?

NewsX, the news channel which has already seen three sets of owners since its launch, is running crawlers on its screens and advertisements on websites, claiming that it was the “most watched English channel” on May 8, when the Karnataka election results came out.

By splicing and dicing TAM data, NewsX manages to show that Times Now was the least watched of the five major English news channel.

On the other hand, Times Now too is running print advertisements of its viewership on results day. Not surprisingly, this shows that Times Now was the most watched, with NewsX not even in the frame.

Also read: The most-watched TV news show at 9 pm is…

Lots of people watch Lok Sabha TV. Surprised?

Headlines Today claims it has overtaken Times Now

How to pass IAS: read newspapers & magazines

It is not often these days that news consumers have something good to say about newspapers.

And magazines.

And TV stations.

And blogs.

And websites.

Individual and institutional transgressions—paid news, private treaties, medianet, Radia tapes, shrieking anchors, sensationalism, jingoism, corruption, etc—have all contributed enormously to the cynicism of the media among the consuming classes.

How heartening therefore to hear Debasweta Banik.

At 22, one of youngest to pass the civil services examinations this year, the NOIDA girl tells the Wall Street Journal‘s India Realtime, that she didn’t reach out for textbooks or attend coaching classes. Instead, she dipped into newspapers to keep abreast with current affairs and frame her essays better.

Yes, newspapers.

WSJ reporter Preetika Rana writes:

“A typical day, Banik says, would begin by studying three out of seven English-language news dailies her father – an engineer at a Noida-based state-run firm – subscribes to. Her staples were The Indian Express, Hindustan Times and The Hindu, but she would also dip into others.

“‘I made cuttings out of articles – commentaries and news stories – which interested me,’ said Ms. Banik, who ranked 14^th in the exam. ‘These were my notes.’

“Opinion pieces written by political analyst Ramachandra Guha and economist Abhijit Banerjee helped her better frame long answers in the exam, she added….

“‘People underestimate the knowledge in newspapers,’ said Ms. Banik, who is from Noida. ‘I don’t know how I would have done this without them. They were my lifeline,’ she said.

Image: via Facebook

Link: courtesy Nikhil Kanekal

Read the full article: How I aced India’s toughest exam

Also read: Shekhar Gupta on Express and the Hindu

The Hindu: the most readable daily in the world?

Just between You and Me, a ‘Time’ special

 

What goes around comes around in the world of magazines*.

Six years ago, Time magazine hailed you, yes You, as the person of the year: “You control the information age. Welcome to your world.”

In circa 2013, it bemoans the “Me, Me, Me” generation addicted to phones, tabs and notebooks: “Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents.”

Just.

* Disclosures apply

Also read: Do Time magazine’s lists means anything at all?

Time, Sandesh and the six degrees of separation

Richard Stengel: Do weekly newsmagazines have a future?

So, how many journalists cracked CAT 2012?

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.

Read the full story: Newspaper boy walks into IIM

Image: courtesy The Times of India

Also read: Another substandard post by unqualified journo

Yes, Kofi Annan is a dish, Teesta Setalvad is an actress

How a newspaper gave an 11-year-old a future

The newspaper world has found its own Kalawati.

On April 25, at a traffic light in Bhopal, Kaushal Shakya, an 11-year-old newspaper boy, had a life-changing experience when his potential buyer turned out to be Rahul Gandhi.

Writes Rasheed Kidwai in The Telegraph:

“Akhbar kyon bechte ho? (Why are you selling newspapers?) Do you go to school?” the Congress vice-president asked the boy holding out a newspaper.

Kaushal, who has been selling newspapers at traffic signals for two years now, said he went to a government school and wanted to be a doctor. He said he sold newspapers in his spare time to help out his family of five, including his parents and two sisters. “My father is a labourer and there are days he doesn’t work,” the boy said, asking the VVIP in jeans and kurta to buy the paper.

“Akhbar le leejye. Aap hi ki khabar hai (Please buy the newspaper, you are news),” he told Rahul.

“Those who were accompanying Rahul that day said he was moved. He took out his wallet and extracted a crisp 1,000-rupee note. A baffled Kaushal handed over the newspaper to Rahul without taking the note. “I don’t have change,” he said.

“Rahul handed over the note. “Please keep it,” he told the boy. “Become a doctor. Never let your dream die.”

One more incontrovertible piece of evidence of what television and the internet can’t do?

Image: courtesy Hindustan Times

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 Praja Vani reporters tracked Karnataka poll

On the day politicians count their seats in the Karnataka assembly elections, the 65-year-old Kannada daily newspaper Praja Vani, from the Deccan Herald group, has a page one, colour-coded graphic that chronicles the journeys undertaken by its reporters to bring the poll to its readers.

The final score: over 27 days, 10 reporters (including three women) travelled 15,000 kilometres to bring 66 spot reports.

Dinesh Amin Mattoo, Praja Vani‘s well-regarded former Delhi bureau chief,  now an assistant editor based in Bangalore (represented in red), alone travelled 4,150 km across 14 of the State’s 30 districts.

Image: courtesy Praja Vani

Headlines Today claims it’s overtaken Times Now

In a non-stop season of scams, you would expect television watchers to switch on private TV stations to get the plain, unvarnished truth?

Well, think again.

Hindustan Times once again reports that the most-watched news shows between 8 pm and 10 pm are those on the state-owned Doordarshan News.

The paper reports that the 8 pm Hindi show on the free-to-air channel had a gross rating point of 1.22 for the week ending April 27—and the 9 pm English show Newsnight had a GRP of 1.14, ahead of Times Now, CNN-IBN, NDTV 24×7 and Headlines Today.

The HT report also quotes the information and broadcasting minister Manish Tiwari, who says:

“What these ratings indicate is the rapidly changing perception of viewers about the kind of television they like to watch and is perhaps an occasion to introspect for those who have made sensationalism their staple.”

Interesting if true.

And, if true, the numbers below, which also use TAM ratings, become interesting.

Images: courtesy Hindustan Times, Mail Today

***

Also read: The most-watched TV news show at 9 pm is…

Lots of people watch Lok Sabha TV. Surprised?

Sharp, sensitive, substantive (conditions apply)

The poll straws. They are a-blowing at DD News