Monday, August 08, 2005
Scrutinizing the Times of India
I think every single Indian blogger has, at some at some time or another, expressed frustration about the state of affairs at the Times of India. TOI, which was once an excellent newspaper, has now deteriorated into a pile of bile and a grave misuse of trees. So, what does one do about it?
Part of the trouble is that India has never had a newspaper of record, like the New York Times or the Washington Post. But even so, when did journalism come to mean advertorials and endless stories about celebrities and their flossing habits, stories that even the National Enquirer would be embarassed to carry?
Even as we contemplate why TOI's trash commands an audience that runs into several hundreds of thousands (lack of alternatives, dumbed-down audiences etc), I think bloggers could apply a great deal of pressure on the TOI and the Indian media in general. Uma's post about the TOI's coverage of the rains in Bombay raised quite a storm in the Indian blogosphere as did their atrocious coverage of the Air France crash in Toronto. Back in May, there was the awful embarassment of plagiarising a spoof.
Atanu and I were discussing this on chat sometime back. While we recognised the need for India to have a newspaper of record, we came to the conclusion that the time was right to start a blogger-driven Watching the TOI-type blog, simply to catalog the horror that the world's largest selling English newspaper has become. If enough people contribute, bloggers may even prevail on the TOI to at least lower the amount of garbage they print every day. We could even paraphrase Newshounds' memorable catchphrase to something like "We read the TOI so you don't have to."
Needless to say, I can't do this sitting in the U.S. with access only to the online edition of the TOI. So, I figured I'd toss the idea into the blogosphere and see if any of you (especially folks based in India) want to run with it. Any takers?
Part of the trouble is that India has never had a newspaper of record, like the New York Times or the Washington Post. But even so, when did journalism come to mean advertorials and endless stories about celebrities and their flossing habits, stories that even the National Enquirer would be embarassed to carry?
Even as we contemplate why TOI's trash commands an audience that runs into several hundreds of thousands (lack of alternatives, dumbed-down audiences etc), I think bloggers could apply a great deal of pressure on the TOI and the Indian media in general. Uma's post about the TOI's coverage of the rains in Bombay raised quite a storm in the Indian blogosphere as did their atrocious coverage of the Air France crash in Toronto. Back in May, there was the awful embarassment of plagiarising a spoof.
Atanu and I were discussing this on chat sometime back. While we recognised the need for India to have a newspaper of record, we came to the conclusion that the time was right to start a blogger-driven Watching the TOI-type blog, simply to catalog the horror that the world's largest selling English newspaper has become. If enough people contribute, bloggers may even prevail on the TOI to at least lower the amount of garbage they print every day. We could even paraphrase Newshounds' memorable catchphrase to something like "We read the TOI so you don't have to."
Needless to say, I can't do this sitting in the U.S. with access only to the online edition of the TOI. So, I figured I'd toss the idea into the blogosphere and see if any of you (especially folks based in India) want to run with it. Any takers?
