Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Bloodbath!

This is from sources, this may not be correct, or fully correct, but when did that ever stop me. his is likely going to be a post that pisses off a lot of people because of its content. There is supposedly going to be a bloodbath in EchTee over the next few days, supposedly as many as 30 people are being shown the door and new people are being brought in to head the Political and Business bureaus. The business head will wear the fanciful title of "Executive Editor (Business)" which is a very fancy way of saying "Business Editor" and from my previous interactions with this man he is a pompous fart. Which means he will fit right into the place. There is also supposedly going to be some RE action and best of all, the new big boss. Yes, and this time round they're getting yet another dark chocolate with white filling, but this one has no experience in India whatsoever. Brilliant! If this is true, I presume Jojo will be buying the drinks for everyone. Or maybe it will be Mr. Jain doing the buying. Anyway, the conspiracy theory7, as mooted by a former EchTee hand has something to do with the head-hunting agency.
In other movement news, the editor of a business magazine who formerly operated as a China stringer, managed to piss off the Finance Minister so much, not like Raghav Behl by banging on (correctly) about the loan waiver but by his general lack of knowledge is going to be replaced because Chiddu's grumbling went back to Calcutta. Furthermore, Forbe's is launching in India in a collaborative project with TV18 and their Ed is supposedly the current Mumbai chief of ET. We know some reasons why this guy is moving on, but we won't speculate about them here lest I be accused of something.
Coming back to The Economic Times, remember how in my last post I mentioned Papermint's rather self-congratulatory piece saying how they got a lot of pieces right and ET got them wrong, a friend of mine at ET called up to say, "Mint is slow and inefficient, their exclusive on Reliance Retail we had reported about happening in November." Cursory web-check proves that to be true, fair enough, ET reported about the possibility of something happening and Papermint reported about the happening, it would lend credence to some people at ET thinking that Mint has no reportage skills.
To take issue with Mint, no media organisation can do an audit like this, had Mint 'outsourced' the audit, maybe to Cirrus or some organisation like that, it might have made sense. I don't believe that ET just did 20-something stories in 50 days about the budget, I used to read five-six daily and many of them had, often in the body-copy (bad desk jobs, but anyway) the word 'considering'. This sort of audit is ripe material for a blog, and Mint's job was a bit juvenile. But what did you expect with Americans! However, anyone from Papermint is welcome to email me explaining their decision.
And coming back to the freaking Bus Corridor and this loony commenter, I think ToI and Megha Suri are doing a fantastic job. Not only because I travel down that stretch, but because it is a bad idea, and the next supporter who says, "Bogota", well the reason the bus corridor works there is because I'm pretty sure Cocaine-central has wide roads, bus drivers on Coke and have you seen the size of Bogota? It is smaller than Defence Colony. I have used public transport, I still use public transport all I am saying that stupidly implemented projects should be flayed. I mean the cunt who thought of reducing the turn-off's at Chirag Delhi to a lane and a half should be shot! And incidentally, the Chief Secretary of Delhi LIED to the Times defending the project.
And lastly, this fantastic article about Vijay Mallya done by Bloomberg is a major reason why India's Beardy is not talking to anyone. That and the fact most F1 fans, well, all F1 fans in India are still supporting Lewis and Kimi.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

what's happenin wid newsx????

Anonymous said...

This is about K's comment on a 'loony' commenter - the poor soul who supported him on the issue of public transport but he should have known better before criticizing ToI or perhaps some reporter. Why, K tell me why, you should call somebody 'loony' yaar! Just because he accused a Paper you seems to be love in with or just because he can't write good English? After all, he is a visitor to your Blog,almost your guest at home and the one who perhaps does not know the Blog etiquettes!! You call him loony? He found your Blog interesting and investing his time and energy into it and you call him loony? Although it is no favour to you as he is doing it because he likes your blog but still don't you think that still calling him loony is somewhat harsh?

Anonymous said...

Any news on TV18's new biz paper? It is going to war between TV18 and Times now. Who will the Kolkata group bring in as editor now? Even the second in commands at that mag are no good.

Anonymous said...

...great man..keep it going...also I completely agree with on mint..I read for a month or two and it apppeared as though they are only concerned with making it more glossy,more reader friendly...but their content could not match upto ET

Anonymous said...

There's buzz in the market Adlabs has bought Aaj Tak and Delhi Aaj Tak for 1000 crore

thalassa_mikra said...

Isn't Kingfisher still running at a loss?

moonstruck maniac said...

Well with Pankaj Paul recruiting people from COlumbia School of Journalism and other colleges from US, this was expected at HT. In a way, it is good. There was a clearance needed at HT. But then I do not mention this without disdain.

Anonymous said...

What is the status of the editor of the business magazine you mention? Is he being replaced?