Erm.. like what?

Firstly I read this. Times and NDTV? Interesting. It is no secret that Times is hurting, the group is still in the Black despite being burnt on long-term newsprint contracts but they're making money. At least the print side is, television is a different kettle of fish. But a tie-up might make sense for both sides. NDTV has no experience of making money. None whatsoever. Times knows how to make money, but their experience of TV is well, the less the said the better. So Times+NDTV in Delhi. Maybe. But then again, NDTV is hedging, they've tied up with The Hindu in Chennai, though with a freeze on capex this year, that channel may not see the light of day.
Also, there was this very interesting graphic in Mint (PDF) recently and that puts what P. Sainath (who in reference to later in this post, refused a gong) says in context. Sainath accused mainstream media of ignoring agrarian India and well, looking at 2008 coverage that is horribly true (though, The Hindu was also measured). However, I suspect that 'International Affairs' includes all news of Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka and lets be honest our neighbours have been newsy this year and I'm sure that 95 per cent of the coverage was from these three countries, four per cent on Obama and one per cent on the rest of the world. 'National Security and Defence', I presume would include all terror blasts and 2008 had one hell of a lot of them. Yup, go down the chain and you see that 'Public Policy & Governance', 'Education' and 'Science & Tech' is way down the list. As the column accompanying the graphic says, this should be a wake-up call to Editors, there can be substantial improvements in coverage.
A little birdie tells me in reference to a 'pompous ass' mention in a Sunday column that someone is very upset that he didn't get a gong. Journalists close to the government always get gongs and god forbid that the BJP come back to power later this year and all chances of any gongs or Parliamentary posts might go away. But to abuse a senior bureaucrat Hmm, corrigendum or not, that was intended, but then again MKN still has his job. That said, it is good to know that the Sangh leadership is finally managing to talk up against the extortionists that are the rabblerousers and rioters across the country.
The BJP's 'Digital Cell' is trying hard to project Advani as youthful, through his 'website', and in the process is sending a lot of money to Mountain View but incidents like Mangalore do not help, demographics and voter profiles are changing and until the Sangh can get a grip of its loony wing and get kids into the fold, things are not going to change. India needs a credible right-of-centre party and increasingly, it seems to be the Congress which after ditching the Commies has started treading ever so slightly to the right.