Monday, July 07, 2008

Business News.

I never knew an editor could fire uip so many emotions, the wrong way at least. People can be fiercely loyal to their editors, I am extremely fond of mine, for example - don't know about the blindly loyal bit though even if I have been around at the same job for over five years. I do know that several people have left EchTee over the past few years, heck my organisation is like a ex-HT halfway house, currently we have six ex-HT people in the reporting staff, quite a lot if you consider that we are a niche magazine.
Well, the I&B minister would have loved us to be a niche magazine. Thanks to a Bengali connection, the I&B Minister recently went to Cabinet proposing that Business magazines get classified as 'niche' and while not getting them under the 100 per cent FDI that is allowed for 'non-news' magazines - which allows Conde Nast to operate with 100 per cent ownership of Vogue, the Bengali connection wanted 'Business' publications to be allowed 49 per cent, higher than the allowed 26 per cent FDI for news publications. The reasonsing behind this is simple, the costs that have to absorbed launching a publication in a downturn are significant, and the publishing house in question is tight for funds.
The problem is that th country's largest publishing house heard of these plans and their operatives got to work. It turned out to be damn easy, since a Cabinet Minister quickly realised that despite what the Bongs claimed, buiness is rather difficuklt to classify as niche or 'non-news'. As a result the expected launch of at least one magazine has been deffered. The other launches are still hanging in the air, but that business house does not have a lack of funds.
In other news, according to one senior political reporter, the price for the Nuclear Deal was Rs 60,000 crore. That is absurd, since when have politicians started prostituting themselves for money. No wait...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We know why Left doesn't want it to happen and that SP is only making use of the situation and doesn't give a damn about the deal.

What I fail to understand is as to why congress is so eager about this deal?

Anonymous said...

congress is so eager bcoz it really believes that the corporate propaganda machinery at work....has actually been succesful in convincing the people of this country that the deal is in NATIONAL INTEREST....and it can put that as a positive step take by the government....however, it needs little intelligence to understand the fact that the deal is in corporate interests(foreign and indian)....
also, i really don't understand one fact...has anyone here actually gone behind the shallow/heavily editorialized news reports and columns and tried to understand the reality behind the deal? lastly, if the commies were really "chinese agents" why would they oppose the n-deal when china actually supports it???!!! guys..im no comrade....but really the whole brouhaha over a stupid deal shows the shallowness in our thinking!