Raju Narisetti

Romantic Realist is a nice alliterative title for his blog, but I think Raju's blog is far more realist than romantic and definately the most entertaining signed, official blog of any editor. I'll be honest, some other Mint blogs are dull (I'll skip other adjectives), and the writers would do well to learn from Mr Narisetti. The same actually applies for several other 'official' media blogs, even those written by senior editors - the blogs on IBNLive are boring. I mean, you won't see a post like this on other blogs - talking about the rival paper in a good way. It is no secret that I have become a fan of Mint, yes their corporate news could be better, but I genuinely find that paper a fun read. Is it because (as RN argues) because of the 'Charticles'? I don't know, but I do sincerely believe that Mint is fun to read, now, I don't want RS coming me claiming I don't think that Mint is serious. No I do, but I enjoy reading the paper. A newspaper should be fun to read, or at least you should look forward to reading a newspaper. I read papers often because I have to as part of my job, or because (in the case of ToI) I need to just to keep up. Otrher than ET, the other business papers claim that they have higher circulation, but I'm convinced that Mint has a higher 'mind share', and this is not me making a sweeping, unverified statement. There is a certain 'fondness' with which certain senior executives talk about Mint. And there is decent web-only content on their website. Some people will send in comments saying that the paper doesn't make money and yada, yada. That really doesn't matter to me as a reader. And trust me, I would rather read about a bloodbath on the markets than about a bloodbath on the streets somewhere in India. That said, Mint really must beef up its policy and politics coverage - one could argue that pages 2-3 of ET are poorly written (and extols the Sangh) but they do allow the paper to punch above its weight.
And a note about yesterday's post, I am criticising any person or anchor. I just pointed out the ridiculousness of having a show called 'Wealth Creators' on at a time like this. CNBC's programming has beefed up its features as ET-TV gears up for launch soon (and there is a strong suspicion that ET will have good business features), but they could have held back instead of launching shows slap-bang in the middle of chaos. I mean not exactly a good time to talk about private jets with gold faucets is it? And I wonder if this will mean that even ET-TV will delay their launch. Also, I managed to catch Undie Profit the other day at a hotel, and they do look a bit better, much better than before actually. But there is that 'top of mind' thing with television. I'm not saying that can't be changed, Times Now, despite Arnab is the best English News Channel to watch.
Anyway, Lewis is on pole for tomorrow's race (Go Lewis!) and I'll be watching that on Airtel TV because those guys insisted I try it out. I was amazed that Sunil Mittal's company has after one decade of trying discovered customer service. It was a smooth, nice installation and I'll see if it is any good.

I agree...

I so completely agree with The V's column in Papermint today that I thought somebody had taken the words right out of my mouth. But I have to add, that, and this is at the cost of being snobbish, that the most irritating specimens are those second-generation desi's whose fathers usually moved into low-paying blue-collar jobs and whose new 'white-collar' status has to be protected at all costs. Airline ticket agents, immigration and police officers and store clerks are sometimes the worst. I remember in Atlanta several years ago how in the CNN Centre at a fast-food restuarant manned by a family we were give attrocious service. Maybe because I asked for beer.
I also found ToI's second lead about Manmohan's proclamation about 'Indians' being in love with George W Bush hilarious (and disturbing). I love lots of Americans such as Scarlett Johanssen, but GWB? Why? I don't want to know about MMS and GWB's man love, but don't get me involved, ugh! Surprising that the other papers didn't play this up. Maybe after the government has said that man-love is still illegal (and will not squash the colonial legacy of Section 377), they don't want to play it up. So does MMS have a perverse mind also?
And while many of you hate my political ponderings, all my hopes of Delhi being removed from under the yoke of Aunty Shiela, the BJP has gone and nominated the most ineffectual VK Malhotra (Can't speak, can't hear and can barely see) as the candidate for Chief Minister of Delhi. I would rather vote for the Communists than have Malhotra lead Delhi. Why does the BJP always manage to shoot itself sqare in the ass? Not in the foot, but they take a shotgun and fire it up their ass, it seems difficult but decisions like these have led me to this conclusion. What next? Sushma as Prime Minister?
And there are more bombs in Delhi. The night I plan to have a party. And if Pakistan is led by this, I'm scared. But then again, maybe he won't know how to aim the warheads!

The malaise spreads?

Trouble at HT Media?

You don't have to make up stories about HT anymore. Not that I ever did.
The Resident Editor of the Delhi paper is off to Dubai and this fact has been written about by a Gulf newspaper. (EDIT: Link corrected) The RE of the Bombay edition runs off for a three-month holiday with his wife, who heads the weekend supplement of the group's financial paper by threatening to quit. Increment's are so bad at the main paper that tens of more people are leaving to join anywhere they can find (now, apparently Sakaal Times is the latest destination - Sharad Pawar's not so bright political fortunes aside), and it seems people on the edit page of the paper have no idea of the term 'copyright'.
Of course, these poor increments are offset by the fact that Papermint is handing out huge salaries, though after the recent shuffle at the top, is supposedly looking for a new new boss - though that appears peculiar. This coupled together with the fact that James, a son of the Murdoch is coming to India to discuss a potential tie-up with another paper group for launching a general paper is even stranger. And there is that little thing about Papermint, have you seen their 'video reports' on their website, these are the rudimentary beginnings of their proposed business TV channel.
And as I asked in my previous post, what on earth has Vinod Mehta been smoking lately? And to answer one commenter. Yes, tech is a lot cheaper than before, and spending collosal amounts on hardware to service small numbers of customers is not a big deal anymore, leasing tech is quite common and the incremental cost of serving new customers is pretty close to zero, but you still need to spend on a decent content management system as well as some amount of fairly expensive hardware. There is a cost, and while you can set up a website for next to nothing, setting up a decent website with content coming in fairly regularly, and one one that can handle a good amount of traffic and stream videos and what have you will still cost. Of course, the cost of tech is probably lower than the cost of an overpaid and idiotic manager, but that is another story.

I'm back...

Sorry, I was away on a trip out of the heat, getting a final series of stamps on my passport before it has to be renewed. This blog has not been 'shut down' by editors orders though ed claims blog is taking too much of my time, which may be correct. Anyway, I'm back now and here are some updates.
According to the grapevine, Jojo IS actually leaving - though no formal papers have been signed he is not only leaving but dragging around 15 senior editors from the Times and ET with him along with a posse of very good reporters. Plus, why did HT's last Executive Editor actually leave, was it because one video clip got released into the wild along with an email chat transcript? And what has been happening at Papermint in the RN-RS equation, who is exactly what now?
And the big news, now that Sanjaya Baru has finally decided to move on, his position will be taken over by The Hindu's current Political Editor Harish Khare and his position might be willed by Sid Vardharajan. Plus, and this is news about one of this blog's favourite personalities, The V is back in play and will be rewarded for years of unswerving loyalty to Italy (which is a frikkin' expensive but gorgeous country) by being made Chairman of Prasar Bharti.
Go figure!

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.

Chiddu ko gussa kyon aata hai?

Is it just me, or are all of you who have read Chiddu's post-Budget interviews in the papers or watched him on TV feeling that Chid's has been in a bad mood of late. Not enough leggy failed models in his life maybe? But, his outburst at Raghav Behl beggars belief. I'm not a big fan of CNBC-TV18, but all that raghav did was ask a lot about the 'waiver' and how the government plans to pay for it. A few too many times, but since Chiddu has no clue about an answer, he could not give a straight answer and got pissed off. After he took his microphone off, we hear that the camera's kept rolling and interestingly, the Finance Minister suuposedly threatened the channel which created the 'Cult of Chiddu' with these words, "You see what I do to you." Even more surprisingly he did not blow up at Raghav but a poor cameraman doing his job.
The only reason I can figure out from Chid's is that he was pressurised into this budget by Madam and her coterie of ministers. Read this ToI story for an idea, of course the Prime Minister, who I can comfortably say has been India's most ineffectual Prime Minister ever, couldn't save him. You saw the adverts the next day!
Anyway, this is an election budget, the budget will get passed, and by the Monsoon session around August the Nuclear Deal will also go through. The Commies will withdraw support and elections will be called for September or October. Or so the thinking goes. I mean a winter election is so much better than a April-May election. Of course, it would be interesting to see if they still pull off an election if the monsoons are weak.
To answer a comment calling me a 'townie', no buddy, I have actually travelled more in the hinterland than most journalists, definately more than most journalists working under the cover of 'business journalism'. Hero Honda and Airtel between them have done more for the 'farmers' than decades of Congress governance. Why is there no public transport in backward parts of the country, because politicians and bureaucrats have siphoned off crores from State Transport Corporations and refused in some cases to allow private operators to run. Kerala is a good example (though it is the scariest state in the country to drive in, I once did a run through Kerala all the way to Aleppy and back in a Scorpio) where private operators operate a lot of buses at high-frequency and thus people use it. It might be a bad example since Kerala is also possibly one of the easiest states to organise transportation in. But when I was in Vidarbha a few years ago, our driver told me that farmers often blew up their funds on motorcycles and TV sets. Unbridled consumerism funded on debt isn't just a problem in urban areas. My Hindi is pathetic, not that it helped in Vidarbha anyway, but I ain't no townie!
There has been a failure of governance for far too long in this country, not just in the farms but also in the cities. And believe me, I also think that the BJP is as bad as the Congress. There is absolute failure of governance in Madhya Pradesh for example. And in cities, I think it should be mandatory for all city councillors, mayors and in Delhi's case the hare-brained Shiela Dikshit to master SimCity4, in fact, they should learn the Transportation Expansion pack of the game. I mean what next? A congestion charge in Delhi, a la London?
Did anyone see Papermint's fantastic hatchet-job/self-congratulatory pages today? Surpriosed at the Red-Dots that ET got?

Happy belated birthdays!

To Papermint (Mint, for the rest of you) and MetroNow (in Delhi), both papers have surprised some by their very survival and I must admit, it has been a steep learning curve. can't really do a year in review, since I cannot claim to have read the papers on a very regular basis, but lets start. MetroNow's biggest story of the year was the Gitanjali Nagpal aka 'Babe on the streets case', this was the year's highlight which the rest of the media picked up. But nothing else that metroNow really did was spectacular. Yes, it reprints some stuff that comes out in Mumbai Mirror, but somehow it seems to lack the irreverance of the Mumbaikar. MM is bindass, like the city, MetroNow is, well... Sadly, the paper suffers because of its rather weird parentage (where Bennett and HT Media both have 50 per cent stakes in an attempt to make sure the India Today-dail Mail paper didn't do too well) - so weird in fact that Metro Now does not have a website which works (two internet organisations with equally clueless plans). Not in the sense of paid or free, there is nothing beyond a billboard.
And you can't really have that criticism about Papermint, their website is fantastic and now registration free. Pity, EchTee's website is still irritating, given that they are in the same group and all. But, what about the paper itself? Like the size, like some of the stories and Papermint has the penchant for nice soft stories, even though the one they launched - shit on the railway tracks or something was pathetic then and it still is - it is as if these guys want to out-Express the Express. But, somehow Papermint is, as a rather famous dot-com entreprenuer who is a fan of the paper told me, 'A great way to read WSJ content for the low price of two bucks.' But when it comes to great news content, while Papermint is a not bad, it still is the 'Mint with a hole' as they might say.
However, there is also 'Lounge', Mint's saturday section, which is very interesting to read at times, not always, but definately at times it is fantastic to read. Pity that they have a sanctimonious old man who keeps on trying to tell us that the Beatles and Led Zepplin rocked. Yes, they did, but get off the pot man! Oh wait, he never did pot - as was admitted in a sanctimonious food article written sometime ago! But, it isn't just this one column in Lounge, while I like most of the columnists in Mint, some of them are truly batty and out of the planet. Anyway, these are just my thoughts on these papers, if you work here, don't take anything to heart and get offended and throw eggs at me while shouting racial obscenities, I mean what can you say, "Bong's are all pricks." Thanks but I already know that.
Back, to everybody's favourite topic on this blog, NewsX. Well, Arup Ghosh has joined them as Newsroom Head, and there have been rumours linking Karan Thapar, Vasu, Rahul Srivastava, Bhupen Chaubey and G-Ban. Strange! In other news, it appears that people have already started to dig through the channels sources of funds and in the coming days, certain nwspapers may print details of this. Keep in mind, that Peter is a British citizen, so ownership issues could be very muddled here. Comment moderation stayed enabled for the time being, though most comments do get cleared and moderation just keeps everything relatively clean.

Another post.

The Indian edition of advertising publication Campaign (only click the link if you want to give them your details) did a hachet job on The V yesterday in a bad example of tabloid-ish reporting. The V today has written about the fact that he was born black and bald in an article arguing that Indians are racist, which happens to be a 'flavour of the month' topic following alleged 'monkey' stories. I would like to take this oppurtunity to point back to a post I had made in 2005 on the issue, where I argued that yes, we were.

Mint, again, has also seemed to follow up the issue (like they did on Times Private Treaties) I had raised in yesterday's blog-post talking about the soap opera that is happening over at INX where people are generally trying to distance themselves from each other. A NewsX insider told me recently that it was unfair to expect them to start the channel in six months, because it even took Rajdeep nine months to start his channel with a nationwide network and that is a benchmark, and if actual work started in July, March is the earliest the channel can possibly come out.

But, the NewsX and INX saga is getting a tad tedious now, even for me and we should move on to other more pressing issues, like why NDTV is sending out reporters for another one of their new channels in pink painted Ambassadors? No really. I saw this yesterday outside Palika bazaar. But, really, we will post an update on Monday following the Jodhpur 'meeting' but after that, we'll move on to other things!

Thought this deserved a link.

This story came out as a full-page story in Mint on Tuesday and refering to my post from a couple of weeks ago, I think it needed to be done.
On a completely unrelated note, Times' hiring continues apace in Chennai. With so many Private Treaties clients based there, I guess it can't be that 'unrelated' can it?

The lack of updates...

Apologies to two readers who actually cornered me at recent Press Briefings and asked me, "K, what the hell is up with you? The lack of updates at your blog disappoint us." Sorry, sorry, sorry, but I really have been busy!
Anyway, moving one beyond grovelling...
Other than making fun of the random ET journalist that I meet about how they're enjoying Liberty Tea, someone was pointing out that since the arrival of Papermint and its close ties with the Aditya Birla group (nephew's company after all!) the Tata's which were not on speaking terms with the Times (the small affair of Dilip Pendse, and no history lessons here) have suddenly started cozying up to them again (though this case indicates otherwise). That said, one senior PR type tried to convince me that this was a 'deliberate' plant to just see if someone could pull off such a stunt. I must admit, whoever the PR type that thought up the story, hats off!
But that leads us to another issue, while the quality of the best journalists in the profession has improved, the sudden boom has meant that there has also been a dilution of quality somewhere down the line. A cursory look at byline frequency will make an observer think that 10 percent of the staff of a print news organisation produce 50 percent plus of the content. Of course, this could have two reasons, either that this ten percent sucks up to the Editors the most or are genuinely good, sometimes both.
Anyway, but how easy is it to get a story through in a newspaper? Pretty easy is what some PR chiefs tell me, once you mollycoddle journalists enough. I do know several senior folks in the PR world, many of them from way before I became a journalist, some through school, college and South Delhi networks. While many of them hold their drinks well, sometimes, just sometimes they blurt stuff out and my god, some of that is entertaining. But, its not what they say, and I do believe them in many cases, just because I have known some of them since I was a pre-teen, but the stuff I have noticed myself.
In one organisation I worked at (guess, guess?) a colleague whose English skills required him to redo his entire secondary education to improve suddenly submitted a perfectly written article. Something was fishy, so I confronted the chap, he denied everything. But if you read the piece it read suspiciously like a PR spin, so eventually an Editor did confront him and he admitted that he had done this before. And if this guy had done it, I'm pretty sure other people had done the same.
Voila, they had! I know of at least three other senior editors who have had entire articles written for them by PR executives, or worse still, policy types in large companies. One large edit page article for a newspaper despairing about the state of the power industry was written by, or lets use the word inspired to an extent that is unethical, by a certain official we'll call Jesus-Man.
But going to companies and listening to their PR spiel is cool, I do that all the time, but copying Press Releases is borderline lazy, and taking either market-gossip or what PR types tell you as the Gospel Truth? That is bad reportage. This is the age of Google and Wikipedia, it really isn't THAT difficult to cross-check basic info, like if a company exists or not! I mean, the above-mentioned websites might have made journalists doubly-lazy, but c'mon?
Is action ever taken against such lazy types? Not that I have heard of in an Indian news organisation. But really, how is this story any different from the 'non-sting', both are examples of fake reportage. Papermint is slowly improving, and once they get their breaking news bits right, with the competition publishing 'fake' stories on a dateline that does not read 'April 1', everyone is in trouble.
By the way, readership is down across the board, well a couple are up, but mostly down. And I'm sleepy, and I drove a lovely car today. I need a drink! Oh yeah, if someone can make sense of the Indian capital markets please let me know.

Minty-Fresh down south.

Three southern Indian editions are around the corner for Papermint shortly, maybe even before the close of the calendar year. While Bangalore is a strong market for ET, Hyderabad and Chennai should be interesting. The paper will have an editor in charge of the southern editions based out of Bangalore. Phase-II for the paper should be interesting, particularly since the quality of their features have improved slowly but surely. News breaks on the other hand...
After seeing yesterday's events in Bihar and reading some of the apologists excuses in the papers, I have been wondering if the mere presence of a video camera gives life to a mob. Not that mobs need much of an excuse, but has the advent of TV News made them crazier? As it is, the difference between news and entertainment, or to use that wonderful term tamasha has blurred to such an extent, it does become a bit difficult to make out what is what. I wonder how difficult it is for an editor to decide to scrap a news show because Salman Khan farted? Not too difficult I imagine.
But, giving coverage to otherwise peaceful and small groups of people and egging them on is standard practice in India. It may not win Pulitzer's but it can win Indian TV awards and gets you eyeballs. Or so one believes. Heck, when Richard Gere kissed Shilpa Shetty, cameramen and reporters went and found small groups whose worldview echoed their own insular ones and egged them onto protests. Heck, if this isn't editorialising what is?
Back in the day when I was a trainee, I had a colleague whose interviewing style was "So what you are saying is XXXXX?" and before the startled interviewee could mutter an answer, it was too late. Technically, nothing wrong in putting words in someone's mouth, technically it still is not incorrect to write that "XXX believes that YYYY is a bitch". That was a lot better than making up quotes or waking the dead, which thanks to the advent of cameras you can't really do. But what you can do with a camera is possibly far worse.
I am not condoning what happened in Bihar, though I am pretty sure that the poor bugger would have beaten to a pulp inside the thana anyway and the cops were so lazy that they let the mob take care of their work for them. But, did the camera egg the mob on? Did the presence of TV cameras make the Gujjar protests worse than they should have been? While I would like to think that it did not, a part of me has a feeling that it did.
PS : When you are carrying a massive visual below the masthead like HT did today morning - they should at least get the planes right. I am pretty sure I was not the only person not sniggering when HT identified a JAS-39 Gripen as a MiG-35. Might have been a small mistake had they taken small images or taken it in an inside page, but for the location this is an awful mistake. Heck, you can even see the Swedish AF markings. Sure, you can argue I'm an aircraft fanboy, but still...

Another tale...

The story goes that when EchTee decided to part ways with its erstwhile editor it was done in an awfully graceless fashion. At the same time, the previous Editor, who has dreams of becoming a TV star and still has an office on the First Floor of the building announced that the guy was being fired just as the CEO was urging him to sign the severance package. So, people were actually texting the guy asking him if he was indeed being fired while he was being fired. The story gets even more interesting that it was the sudden cancellation of a column written by an ace TV journalist that broke the camel's back!
But, that my readers isn't the whole story. The story gets even more interesting...
Bennett&Coleman, publishers of The Times of India and The Economic Times, and part owners of Times Now, by far and away the largest media group in the country are supposedly interested in buying a stake in HT Media.
Yes, really!
The two papers combined will have a stranglehold on the Delhi market and monopolies in several other small city markets across Northern and Eastern India.
But why would Mrs B want to sell?
Ever since she was elected to the Rajya Sabha, Mrs B has been a very conscientious Member of Parliament, really, no sarcasm intended. Her interest in handling the day-to-day affairs of the paper are diminished and her sons do not seem to be interested as well. Sameer Jain on the other hand is already grooming his daughter for her future role. HT has also been lurching from one Editorial crisis to another, and strangely enough, it is fairly widely accepted that despite their sometimes silly focus on pointless stories, ToI is the better paper. You would never have said that two-three years ago, where people parised HT for their editorial content. Nowadays, you do get the distint feeling that the paper is becoming a 'Me-Too' sort of place.
What happens? If BCCL steps in with money, at a substantial premium to current market price to buy a largish stake in HT Media, it actually helps them compete with the India Today Group's new planned daily paper - the Daily Today or whatever it is going to be called (I will reserve judgement on that till later). Whether it is another case of BCCL management driving themselves paranoid yet again before a new product - they drove themselves and editorial nuts before Papermint launched. After that their was massive consternation among management and editorial at ET - 'We drove ourselves crazy... About THIS?' Heck, every ET staffer I met in the weeks following Papermint's launch was actually pissed that the new paper wasn't the product they hoped it would be.
What might also happen is that BCCL will send one of their Editors (Gautam?) to run HT, with most BCCL senior writers having risen through the ranks and not being imports from foreign climes, this could lead to a truly competitive daily market. The problem is that how competitive can two papers from effectively the same umbrella be? Well, they can be different, if positioned smartly and with semi-decent content. The issue is now with regards to Papermint, you seriously wonder what will happen there, if such a takeover does go through.
Unlikely, some of you might say, HT will never give up control. Maybe, but this a rumour that has being doing the rounds recently. Not the chotta-motta rumours you hear from the line staff, but from senior guys and from the markets. Another reason to give some amount of credence, HT and BCCL have been collaborating on Metro Now. Which, while a rabid rag and positively unreadable most of the time has been doing not so badly.
Legalities? There is nothing like the FCC in India. PRDM wants to regulate TV News content in India, and can't really stop this short of passing a legislation preventing this, which is unlikely to happen. We do not have something like the FCC in India or anti-monopoly laws which would prevent something like this.
This will be fairly interesting to watch. Whether it will finally happen or not might be speculative in the truest sense of the word, but while we obsess about new-age TV companies, if the Grandmother of all media companies becomes aggressive, things could really spice up a lot!

Jamborees!

I almost got trampled by a bunch of lunatic cameramen and videographers at the Civil Aviation Ministry today where Praful Patel was showcasing the new colours of Air India. The rush was insane, can you imagine one hundred people trying to capture an image, first shoving the reporters to the background (of course, it is all about an image isn't it?) but I really didn't expect the level of abuses that were hurled around by the two 'camps' (Still and TV) to each other - all this while the minister was talking, how there wasn't a fistfight heaven only knows. At the end of the conference cameramen of all hues were climbing onto the table. I could consider myself fairly seasoned, and I've been pushed around by the cameraman desperate for a shot - but at this event? These are occasions, like in the West where news organisations should seriously start considering pooling resources.
Take another example, at the GM Chevrolet Spark launch recently, the GM team had organised a dance show recently. Not that dance show was exciting, but it might have been had we seen it. No, instead a bunch of photographers, evidently none of them working for a dance magazine just crammed the front of the stage, and really no-one got to see much. I didn't quite see the point. Maruti had a dance show for the launch of the Sx4 as well, but had specific areas for photographers, and for God's sake, have photo-calls separately, don't allow goons, because I'm afraid that is what these guys have become, to take over shows.
On another note, I think everybody's favourite #2 business paper, Papermint is in a spot of bother because their advertising supplement, imaginatively called 'Campaign' will have to change its name because the advertising magazine Campaign which is produced by Haymarket is being brought to India by Haymarket's Indian arm, which is run by Hormazd Sorabjee and has had considerable success with Autocar.
And of course, St Stephen's has appointed Valson Thampu as Officiating Principal. I don't know what to say here, and even though Thampu taught me (as did Anil Wilson) and he is a very nice guy, I mean he always marked me present even when I missed his classes, I have to admit that his classes were quite on the dull side. No, they were horribly dull. Not that Anil Wilson's classes were any better, but that man was a decent administrator. With Thampu in charge, I hope the fear of the place becoming a Fundamentalist Christian haven where Jerry Falwell would have felt at home don't come true. That said, Thampu has very good ties with many of the left-wing teachers in college, so things may not be as bad as some people expect them to be. I know there are a few emails floating around, but I'm not buying into any of them. Anyway, I boubt we will become 'Stevanians' now. Ad Dei Gloriam!

Hot

I think I have figured out the reason why my blogging proclivity has diminished of late. It is the heat. No, honestly. After a meeting in Gurgaon or wherever, and then the 30-45-60 minute haul back to office, even in an air-conditioned car, with the sun beating down on your every pore, turning your skin a dark shade of dark, the last thing you want to do after you get anywhere - office or home - is to sit down on a computer and type. You need an hour just to recover and then you realise that because you happened to shoot your mouth off in a meeting, "You, know I think if we do XYZ it will be a good idea." Pitching the idea with options, not exactly an idea, a section really, and then your kind editor says, "Great idea, I like the name, why don't you implement it. Now!"
Oops!
Some colleagues and peers complain that their problems are to do with the fact that their ideas never get accepted, recently one was distraught that a suggestion he made on the medical instruments market was dropped because of unsympathetic editors. Well, I can't blame the editors there, but, if you get into a system and know exactly what sort of stories work and how to pitch you get into the opposite situation - you know you can pitch five things and if everything goes wrong all five get accepted and suddenly you find yourself with... well, traveling to Gurgaon much more than you would like to. Particularly when it is almost 40 degrees outside. The only saving grace to that is that there are a lot of nice places to eat in Gurgaon now and the Landmark store is also there. And to be honest, the Expressway has made life slightly easier.
Then again, if you happened to be a gregarious animal like me, you decide to complicate your day further by sticking with friends all night long. Till the end of the World Cup match, no matter how boring.
Anyway...
I now come to an important topic of discussion - whats up on KG Marg? Recently, the Sports Editor of the newspaper had a showdown with the Editor and quit. However, the Editorial Director asked him not to leave and supposedly told him that the issue 'will get sorted out'. And now it gets more interesting, the Ed in a meeting proclaimed that he didn't read the paper's supplement, and while you can't blame him for avoiding trash, the ED had a point to make, "(said supplement) is part of the paper too and you are the Ed."
Hmm. Methinks that there is about to be some activity at that building.
And what about the 'Daily Today' (that is what we will call it for now), the weird creation between the Daily Mail and the India Today Group? Well, no editor can be found for love of money just now, but I have heard someone from KG Marg is on his way there. Will it work? See, I'll be honest, the Times has improved dramatically over the past year, really. Parts of it are still ill-informed and trashy, but there has obviously been a lot of work in that paper. And in almost every city the paper is present, they have the best city coverage. I could not have said that about Times Delhi a couple of years ago, where city reportage bordered on the inane. Now, it must be said city reportage is quite solid. In fact, it is the best.
And the thing about a newspaper is that no matter how solid your Nation, Business and Sports sections, unless you have a solid city team it just won't sell. Just look at the travesty that is MetroNow, it is so bad, it is really not funny. I mean even the jokes are unfunny. They started out well, but it has been a fairly downhill road from there. Whereas Papermint has recently been coming out with some really nice stories (though one might argue only ONE person has been coming up with the stories) of late. But, they should have the the railway shit in peace!

'The V' ko gussa kyon aata hai?

Sometimes you get genuinely surprised at reading certain things, for example when The V spewed bile at Narendra Modi and the BJP in general, you would read his articles for the language, and comment on the prose. But last Sunday I was genuinely surprised at Counterpoint, where The V, decided to attack everybody's favourite I&B minister, someone who makes Sushma Swaraj look like a forward thinking woman. But, for someone who thinks that Sonia Gandhi and the Sardarji make the best couple in India since Raj Kapoor and Nargis, and this government is the best thing to happen to India since Moet Hennesey set up shop here, the level of vitriol in this article took me by surprise. I mean, all the other guys in the media (UndieTV and RajdeepTV) were still attacking Modi for 'banning' Parzania in Gujarat, but here was The V going hammer and tongs at PRDM.
Something fishy was up, this would not happen in the regular course of things, I mean to the best of my knowledge we had not transcended into a space-warp because Swapan was still at his eloquent right-wing best. So the world hadn't turned around and I hadn't drunk too much Bourbon on Saturday that had sent me into a parallel universe.
So I did what all good journalists do, I figured I would ask around, and I really didn't have to ask to much. It seems that Papermint, the paper with a hole, has more trouble than just a simple and complete lack of readable content and have even junior PR people laugh at it (more on that later). It seems, the Ministry has objections to WSJ content in mint. I don't know the exact details, but (and I won't be surprised if Times is playing a hand here) it is being argued that since mint, as a newspaper, and not a journal/general-interest magazine is not following prescribed Syndication norms and to top that there are also issues with putting WSJ on the masthead, which the Registrar Office of Newspapers for India (RNI) seems to have an issue with.
Now, according to some people, it seems that while sending official communiques to mint, PRDM has not been giving executives from the company run by his Congress parliamentary colleague any attention, refusing to meet them and going so far as to prevent his underlings from taking any decisions on the matter. Now, if party loyalties are not being followed in the first place, it isn't very difficult to break them isn't it?
I have no beef with the article, I think Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi is a person who should do his job and not try to police the media. I have said this before, Dasmunshi has allowed Indian football to fall to depths of hell, and even the Indian league is populated by has-been players from Nigeria and Brazil. At the same time, he wants to pass some extremely draconian laws controlling the media in India which even the Bush Administration would never do (but something more from the Putin book of media control - no, not quite that because that usually involves masked killers, but he is getting there). But as said, I was genuinely surprised by the tone of the article and the very fact it appeared and while some might argue that this is a very cynical reason why the article was written, in this industry it makes complete sense.
Sadly though, if this was the main problem for Papermint, one might understand, but yesterday I had a long chat with a colleague from Bombay and his one word reaction went 'Bakwaas', that paper has some serious repair work to do. Really!