Saturday, August 27, 2011

R.I.P. Indian Newspapers

Times of India used to be great news paper. One might still think the same-particularly when you website hits are more than New York Times, The Sun, Washington Post, Daily Mail and USA Today websites. Not a mean thing in view of the fact that India is not the super power of the day. But the matter of fact is that long ago TOI ceased to be a family newspaper. And if its website hits are more than The Sun and The Daily Mail then it has succeeded in its aims. And cessation of being a family newspaper is proved. And this is a said thing. Apart from being an excellent news paper TOI publications (Bennet Coleman and Company Ltd) used to have the finest periodicals in India. All dead by now. This is a tragedy of gigantic proportions. The weekly magazine called The Illustrated Weekly of India died in front of our eyes-Pritish Nandi desperately trying to keep floating and failing miserably. It was a great magazine. India Today and OutLook magazines filled the slot left vacant-a proof that points to the fact that it was failure of TOI group and not a change in readers preferences. Then there was Hindi story monthly called Sarika. Just lovely magazine but that too disappeared. Then there was science monthly-Science Today. Very sorely missed till now. You still have nothing between Nature, Scientific American and usual newspaper articles about science. Science Today was excellent in filling that slot. But if you go by the philosophy of man called Samir Jain media is not about catering to reader interests-it is all about making money. Then there were other excellent publications by the same group by why should we put our heart in more trouble.

Coming back to newspapers. Hindustan Times was always the Delhi newspaper so if you are not a Delhite why should you bother about it?

Then there is the Indian Express (and the New Indian Express-very confusing isn't it?) First let us clear the confusion. The Express Publications Group bifurcated and you got two newspapers out of one. Both exist independently of each other. Now this (now these) newspaper has been obsessively anti-establishment. So it played some role in larger contexts. But isn't the job of the newspapers restricted to report unbiased news?
One gets tired of too much of activism. You want news from newspaper and politics from politicians.

A few decades ago The Hindu of  Madras (yes that is what it was then) expanded to whole of India. Being a newspaper to the center of left (actually solidly) it always had its flavour that you might or might not have liked. By now the later possibility is more prominent owing to its blind support to those systems that share its ideology.

So nothing to read in English. That is good too. Just relax and have your cup of tea-after Ramadhan, that is.