Monday, September 28, 2009

BlackNeutral asks

In the comments from the last post.. Nicely written, so thought of publishing it whole..

Hello there !. Glad you spoke up !. I was very much taken aback by this change in the quality of TOI.The newspaper has lost my respect.Probably this loss of integrity may be due to the marketing war existing between the publishers, which affects the editorial content.

Today Times of India outsells Indian Express, which is far much a better newspaper in terms of quality of the news we get. I say this because I go to the nearby news stand on sundays, at ten in the morning, only to find that TOI papers have long been soldout.I happily pickup the Express, which used to be still there. Yet Express is still traditional, the way I have known newspapers. But I am not sure what it will be like in the future, anyway.Strange, the now generation does not like the old school style.

I am not sure whether you have read the fiction "The fourth estate" by Jeffery Archer. It talks about the war between two newspaper barons fighting for market, who by no means care for the tradition or the respect the newspaper holds in the hearts of millions and go about printing news which people like to read and gossip around. Who is to blamed for this, the people or the publishers ?


BlackNeutral, my friend, if I could've explained it all, I would have in the last post.. As I said in a different post, it's probably a symptom of everything that is weird about this age of hours.. The Times has realized that no one actually bothers about the news as such.. Most people get their news from headlines.. That explains the news tickers that keep rolling on 24 hour news channels.. Business (CNBC et al), Sports (Star Cricket) and Music (MTV / Channel V) also have their own tickers.. It's just us that feels we don't have the time to read the entire news and analyze it.. Honestly, ever since I have known it, a day always had 24 hours, never more.. So how is it that we feel we don't have the time for anything??? Fundamentally, I don't know one thing that is different in our lives compared to that of our parents at the same age..

Why is it then that they were always smiling and we are having to take physicals once a year???

Sunday, September 06, 2009

With great power comes great responsibility

.. So said Spiderman's grandfather...

I know it's a film line, but it's damn good.. It sounds cheesy and filmy, but it's something that gets lost in our day to day fast life..

Every time I read the Times of India, I am reminded of this line.

This is today's front page headline in the Pune edition of Times.. Pune's so-called leading newspaper..

It has all the ingredients of how not to report.. Starting with the headline.. The one-way did not claim the little child's life, it was the bus and the bus drivers... The bus driver hit the scooter ahead of him while trying to overtake another bus, so how is it the fault of the one-way? And is it really front page news? The Leader guards the Reader, it says.. How, is quite another matter.. Power of the Press is only possible when the Press acts responsibly..

The Times is slowly denigrating to a quality worse than the evening tabloids... As I have written in the past, it hurts me when the Times falls to such levels.. It's not so much that they publish news without a soul.. They are now a business, but the Times is slowly becoming a case study for what happens when you lose your integrity..