Friday, November 16, 2007

Ek aur newspaper!

It's been raining raddi in Delhi for the last few months, three new papers in under a year - PaperMint, The bastard child and now Mail Today which came out today. First impressions, nice paper, nice size, nice layout, but I can't seem to find any content inside. Forget the business pages which began with a pointless story, even the lead story was rather pointless. This is a paper that is focussing on the Delhi market, so why don't they give me local news, not something about some bureaucrat. Tell me about the weird High Capacity Bus Service (HCBS) Corridor which has brought South Delhi to a screeching halt or even something of national importance. Or then be a tabloid. Proper tabloid.
That said, I think that PaperMint is only finding its feet now, with some really interesting reportage and it took MetroNow a few months to get cracking and go after that 'model on the streets' story, which was a great tabloid story. My honest opinion about the newspaper will be misconstrued, but it is difficult for a paper to be too many things - DNA proved that dramatically in Bombay and only now after getting some single minded focus and getting rid of the marquee names is the paper finally waking up.
A focus on 'women' is what was mentioned at a recent press briefing, and honestly I couldn't find anything that was focussed on women or at women. There was no story that came out of the paper and hit you, it was just several pages of well-designed blah, and with some of the senior editorial staff there right now, I doubt it will migrate from being more blah. PaperMint, for all its worth did always have some strong batsmen in the line-up, as did MetroNow. Anyway, first day, first show has been slightly disappointing, lets see how the paper progresses!

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