Every society reserves certain insalubrious tasks for its newest or temporary initiates. In sports, for instance, it falls to the newest ballboy to launder the jockstraps of the veterans. Here at the Mutiny, an repugnant yet unavoidable duty devolved to interns, aspirants, and guest-bloggers like your humble servant, is to read the online edition of the Times of India. The cyberspace manifestation of what, allegedly, was once the subcontinent’s paper of record, is such a toxic aggregation of horrible writing, execrable production values, and offensive pop-up advertising that going near it requires a certain masochism, or at least a near-pathological eagerness to please.
And yet for you, gentle readers, we will do anything. And so, as a public service, I have excerpted for you the key portions of today’s preview article on George Bush’s upcoming trip to desh.
We begin with the lede:
Bush may be coming to India to discuss the N-treaty but it’s the culture curry which is reigning supreme in his mind.
I know you got the fever for the flavor:
The mood in White House right now is, Indiaah! Come March, India is going to be the flavour of the season in the US, as President Bush and First Lady Laura make their first official visit to India. And India is all set to give President Bush a flavour of desi culture curry.
You may have missed the point about curry:
It seems President Bush loves desi colours, culture and curry. “The President has a lot of Indian Americans working for him at the White House. Very often, he along with the first lady attends Indian dinners.
He always tells me: ‘Oh, I loved spicy Indian food.’ While Laura is a charming and sophisticated lady,” says Shivangi.
Some serious reporting went into this story:
The Air Force One is almost ready for take-off. When we contacted the White House for an official list of the Indian Americans who’ll be travelling with the President, the official spokesperson from National Security Coucil, which is finalising the list said, “We’ll be announcing the names shortly.”
Oh, and did we mention curry?
Another question which people want answered is whether the President, like Clinton, will be digging into chicken curries?
This concludes our public service excerpt of the Times of India, the paper that is to journalism what H5N1 is to chicken curry.
Sid, hilarious stuff! Good Lord. I’d’ve completely missed this curryfest as I make a point to give the ToI a wide berth. Especially liked your ending:
But. One objection. Who you calling gentle, bitch?
Awesome stuff Siddhartha. Your hard work trawling the ToI site certainly paid off. Here, finally, is an exemplary sample of fine journalistic writing that cheers you with your morning cup of tea.
“fever for the flavor”…amazing…Curry is the new Cowbell!
Okay, I just developed a girlcrush on Neha.
neha, would that i could take the credit, darling. tis an ancient hip-hop reference…
bong breaker,
oh, your moms didn’t tell you?
(yes, this is puerile amerikan humor)
Funniness!
Forget my moms dude, what’s with all the girlcrushing in this place? The seven-to-one male:female blogger ratio on the staff has somehow resulted in an inordinate amount of girls fancying girls. ‘Course, perhaps the same is true for the oppo, but they’re just more Brokeback Hillstation about it. I can picture it now…
Sid wraps his arms around [nameless male Mutineer. You know I’m thinking of Abhi] “Hey, you’re sleeping on your feet like a horse”
(yes, this is puerile Angrezi humour)
bb –
i’m not going to tell you what i found out about abhi’s social life yesterday…
😉
What makes you think I don’t already know sid? I’m the BB, ear to the ground, nose in the air and so forth. I know these things. I don’t need you. I saw you at the paddock, before the second race, I saw you outside the men’s room when I placed my bet, I saw you before you even got up this morning. I already know what you’re going to say. Don’t act smart, I don’t need you to tell me.
OK tell me.
This is very interesting considering a story I read in the wsj today. It seems as if Mr Manhoman Singh’s daughter, ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh is vehemently against the current administration and it’s treatment of war prisoners. That would make for very interesting conversations between the two leaders, don’t you think?
And this curry talk got me starving now….time to go whip up some jeera chicken and naan..yum
Sid,
You now owe me $3.50 (Three fity for all you south park fans out there) for making me hungry at 5:30 in the evening. Good post.
As Sid said, its sad to see that paper being projected as ‘times’ of India is nothing more than “trash” of India anymore. Oh and seems like they dont even bother to spell-check before publishing when they say ‘Hindu’ outfit targets HF Hussian on the frontpage. sigh. What next?
on the plus side here is the caption of their front page photograph:
so there is some real news after all!
That was awesome !!! TOI (Toilet-paper Of India)’s jewel have been discussed here before too. Like the one when they thought Aishwarya Rai is going to be on Jerry Springer, then once the rag threatned a blogger and once they posted a fake story about a conversation between two “American” employees talking about their “Desi” co-worker… that was extremely lame.
While the blogosphere keeps an eye on the Indian print media, here’s a blog that peeks into the Indian tv news channels – a bit gossipy, but a fun read. Its supposedly written by “insiders” who seem to be getting the dirt from their moles at NDTV, CNN-IBN, etc.
seriously though … what newspaper would you recommend if one decides to get one shipped over from india… i’ve looked over a couple of rags .. .and the only one i liked enough to get a subscription for was ‘frontline’… some of their photo-features were excellent – and it wasnt all that glamorous…
for that matter, can anyone recommend a hindi paper as well
in the sense … that’s a good thing.
“seriously though … what newspaper would you recommend if one decides to get one shipped over from india”
I’d say Indian Express and The Telepgraph
[Link to rediff article added by me]
Yep I am sure, it will make for some interesting conversations:
“How are the kids?”
“Aw, you know they get into some trouble here and there, fake ids, underage drinking. But thats not happening again. Fool me once…and you know the rest. How about your kids?”
“Oh, well one of them is suing yo ass…” [Ok, sorry that was lameass, but does this count as a 55?]
Incidentally here is a clip of Amrit Singh giving an interview for an Australian program. [NSFW and not for the faint of heart/stomach either]
Hilarious, Sid. An equally funny description was once given by GreatBong on my Mumbai Merror post. I’d like to share it with you’ll: “The TOI/Indiatimes webpage is a cancer—it attempts to install spyware (search and destroy stops it), unloads cookies like a benign grandma and launches a thousand pop ups—all the characteristics of a porn site. It becomes a total porn site once they have a picture of the “June babes” and a headline about superpimp Kanwaljeet.”
I edit(ed) a small paper. I was pretty good. Reckon I could take over ToI? It’s a great opportunity, they still have a big name, plenty of money and an established position and distribution network. I’d love to do a re-launch, India’s prime for a Berliner or smaller, slick paper. All it needs is an editor with nouse and it could be saved. Starting fresh in print media in India is very tough. But steering a faltering giant back on the straight and narrow could be done.
I could call it the Mutiny of India and steal all my stories from a certain blog. Easy money.
OK! I thought it was India and Pakistan. check out Ronen(aka Ranendra) Sen at pressclub.and the Times coverage(it could have been an APfeed). He says something else but it gets summarized as something else. Journalistic Summaries are so lousy. I would have failed anywhere with that kind of thing if i did it in an essay or book report.
CSPAN recent events archive it contains video of President at asia society today(i am watching that as im typing) and Ranendra yesterday at pres club [link]
Personally … i find the same bleeping news agencies pushing the same info all over. I read one newspaper a week – the saturday globe and mail – and the ink’s been squeezed out by the time i’m done – and only because i enjoy the opinions section and the research they put into it. I lookde into the IndExp link KXB (thanks for the link) but wasnt too impressed by the columnists. The writing was shallow… at least for the few odd links I tried. Like i said earlier, i liked frontline for some really meaty stuff. i could really sink my teeth in it and when they published book excerpts… they were really book excerpts, good enough to be short stories. hmm..
sure, why not … you got a sample? a business plan is nt hard to do.
dhaavak, you think they’ll just let a 24 year-old student waltz in and take over?! I was kidding! But let’s say, in a hypothetical, I was offered the helm of ToI, I think I’d put the medicine on hold and take it. Editor of one of India’s major papers is a very powerful position indeed these days. Oooh, I’m kind of excited now, in my little mind I actually think they’re going to write to me.
Bong Breaker,
Email to Jain Family, that owns TOI. At one, it used to be a decent, venerable newspaper. It just went downhill over the years.
Dhaavak,
I only read India Today.
“for that matter, can anyone recommend a hindi paper as well”
dhaavak,
Try Hindustan Times Hindi online version. Maybe, Danik Samachar too.
One of the Hindi newspaper is owned by Independent or one of leading newspapers from Scotland.
Indian Express is a good one. They also have a weekly north america edition that I subscribed for a few months. I thought it was OK. Apart from that I would choose Daily Telegraph or The Hindu.
In terms of online content Indian Express and Financial Express are much better than Hindu or Telegraph IMO. The Hindu especially needs to hire some good website designers and revamp their website. All of them need to reduce those random pop-ups and categozie their RSS feeds. No one actually goes directly to the website these days!!
thanks for the guide on the newspapers guys… and BB… screw medicine… go for the newsjob… i’m sure the interns are more fetching whichever way you swing
This concludes our public service excerpt of the Times of India, the paper that is to journalism what H5N1 is to chicken curry.
I agree wholeheartedly. When it’s owner (the jain family )got embroiled in the Bank of Rajasthan scam they ran front page stories how they were being prosecuted etc. etc.Wonder why people like Swaminathan Aiyar stick with them.
“seriously though … what newspaper would you recommend if one decides to get one shipped over from india”>/i>
The telegraph, The Statesman, The Hindu, Indian Express, Business Standard
“The cyberspace manifestation of what, allegedly, was once the subcontinentÂ’s paper of record, is such a toxic aggregation of horrible writing, execrable production values, and offensive pop-up advertising that going near it requires a certain masochism, or at least a near-pathological eagerness to please”
I couldnt have said it better if I tried. Hilarious excerpts Sid! 🙂
BB, which paper you edited? If you were reasonably successful in it, I don’t think your plan is out of reach. However given the recent trend in TOI, if I were you(who am I kidding), I wouldn’t touch them with a 10-feet pole. There is no nither a strand of editorial policy or ethics left in that cut-copy-paste rag. It has been completely taken over by the suits (read Medianet – the group’s advertising/PR arm). They openly sell headlines and stories through it. Bond movie profiles and McD ads wrapped up as “he-said, she-said” articles started making headlines. Dileep Padgaonkar was the namesake editor until recently, which basically meant he got to write a 600-word editorial in some remote corner of the center page on Sunday. I think they’ve now even scrapped that position. Bacchhi Karkaria was slightly funny, the way Parsis are, but they moved her out to Delhi. You can imagine if Shobha De rules the roost. I read in an article (probably by Khushwant Singh or Busybee) where Jain brothers, the proprietors, argued that they were there to serve whatever sells. And there was no real need for the editorial position. I reckon now they call it something like business relation mgr or some such thing. And after all this blogging/shlogging business started, there have been quite a number of stories which bloggers have picked up. There was a blogger dude called Jivha. He was da to-go man for all the sins committed and junk pushed down the reader’s throat in the name of press by SlimesOfIndia. For reasons unknown he pulled down his site. But if you know Mediaah! story, then I guess it doesn’t take too much to put two and two together. I am saying all this with a touch of disappointment because I and many others like me around that time, grew up looking up to TOI. Now their front page of Bombay Times would easily get an adult rating every single day.
For anyone who wants to read good news reporting from India, I’d suggest IndianExpress, Telegraph, Hindu. Deccan Herald too is quite decent in a so-so sort of way. If you are asking about weeklies or magazines, Frontline or Tehelka. When Tehelka launched they were a breath of fresh air. At last I felt I could read in-depth stories (not just on political news) but even their coverage of arts, cinema, books, cities etc. was above expectations. Their reporting went beyond coverage and in atleast two three big cases they did all the dirty work and chased the story until they got the culprits down rather than just cash-in at the sensation counter. Over a period of time I think they’ve diluted a bit, despite that I believe they are right on the top(if you are really keen you can read a feedback letter –warning v.long — which I wrote to them last year, my first blog post, available from my main page). For Hindi I guess Dainik Samachar coz everyone mentions it (I’ve never read it personally) and Marathi Loksatta. I’ve not seen the new papers launched in the last year (DNA, Mirror et al). For defence scoops(NASA boy Abhi, I am looking at you) Harinder Baweja of Tehelka is the equivalent of Subramaniam Swamy of Hindu. They once got email interview of Masood Azhar(?) that chap who was released in Kandahar hijacking. They confronted the Indian army with hard evidence to show how many peaks in that troubled border region were really in India’s control. It so turns out that the Army is not as clean as we might want to believe. I used to read it cover-to-cover when I was in des until last year. However if you believe in the excessive stereotyping law (A once slept with B, and B’s a XYZ-party-member, so A’s a liar), then by that token Tehelka/Frontiline/Hindu/IE are all leftists. So save your time and don’t read them.
Since we are talking about general Indian media scene here, I just have one more observation. None of the newspaper websites seem to have got hold of the internet business side of theirs in order. And I am not talking abt technorati or blog links like WaPo NYT et al.. but very basic, Google PR, searchability, basics of website design etc. What do you guys think is the reason behind this. Why are they all sitting on potential revenue generating machines ?
BB, can we hear more about your editing experience. And maybe you’ll also have some concrete data-points to my above query.
i can now tell a siddhartha lead because it’s always got prime SAT/GRE words aligned in a sublime and inspiring fashion.
seriously mr. mitter, your use of the english language is tight! where can i get me one o’dem vokabyoolarees?
Suhail, I was the first proper ed-in-chief of this and am now consultant editor, which is a post I invented to sound fancy. I won a National Student Journalism Award, don’t you know 😉 Nah, ToI isn’t for me. I would like to write for TIME though, I really don’t think my fellow Gupta, Sanjay, is a good writer nor a good reporter. I want both his jobs, CNN Medical Correspondent and TIME Medical Correspondent. And he says ‘Gooopta’. What a dork.
bong breaker: i’m with you on the gupta bit.. but i’m in competition with you for his job as cnn med correspondent… it’s funny since he’s still considered as facutly in the dept of neurosurgery at emory… i ask the other neurosurgeons about him, and they just laugh.. haha.. how you can be 100% good at being a writer, correspondent, and a neurosurgeon on faculty um… doesn’t really add up to be quite honest..dunno.. i laugh when i see him on sunday morning on his 30 min health show… but at least he’s not hard on the eyes 😉
seriously cringeworthy.
siddartha– big ups for the Black Sheep tie in. But is “Indiaaaaaahhh!” a tribute to Howard Dean’s scream heard round the world? 😉
Honestly, the online edition of TOI can have you calling out for the smelling salts.
here’s what i’m talking about folks. The link is to an article on Eravikulam national park in Kerala. Lovely pictures, in-depth discussion. This is the kind of stuff that first attracted me to the Frontline magazine. Kush, I’ve tried India Today – but it just seemed like an Indian version of Time, not my top read. Suhail I will check out Tehelka although my preference is a paper magazine – i am getting tendinitis or some problem in my wrist from all the computer work and my index finger is hurting where i keep pressing the mouse-nub – and paper would be more wholesome.
yeah Frontline is cool. Little Magazine is cool, but expensive. India Today is decent, Time is not that bad a paper. I heard Economic and Political Weekly is pretty good. Have checked it out a few times. Also Stardust will give you a really in-depth appreciation of the political situation at any given moment
BB: I didn’t know you won NSJ award, I missed it if you’ve already mentioned it earlier. By the way can you send me an email, I have some resources reg’g yr filmmaking aspirations(would be offtopic here). Good luck on beating Sanjay Gooopta. oh and btw, my REM sleep (30 hrs straight) beats the living daylights out of your REM 😉
dhaavak, I empathise with you. But gotta live with what’s available. Also, it’s been just a year since they’ve launched. So I guess they just don’t have that kind of readership yet to start dead-tree versions in phoren lands.
On that point, what all print versions of Indian newspapers/magz are available here in US?
What do you guys think of Outlook?
And is the paper edition of TOI as ‘tabloidy’ as their online edition? I thought the online edition was like this just because their consumer base comprised primarily of bored and horny desi engineers 🙂
Outlook is a good magazine. Re: the paper edition of TOI, I have no clue. My impression is that is at least with the “fat, content and settled” generation in B’lore—the only demographic whose paper reading habits I know—TOI has never been very popular. But yes, the paper version is trashy, not as bad as the online one. You can’t possibly do popups in print, can you?
For pop-ups, long live Adblock and Firefox. But crazy when have to do it on a news site.
outlook is good, but sometimes its plodding. they’re like Rod Blogajevich on the Daily Show