{"id":2522,"date":"2005-11-15T12:07:24","date_gmt":"2005-11-15T17:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=2522"},"modified":"2005-11-15T14:10:03","modified_gmt":"2005-11-15T19:10:03","slug":"dastardly_deeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/15\/dastardly_deeds\/","title":{"rendered":"Barista-gate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/002061.html\">ToI<\/a><\/em> reporter showed up to a small Delhi blogger meetup several days ago under an assumed name and did a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nypost.com\/gossip\/gossip.htm\">Page Six<\/a>\/Page 3-style takedown of our very own <a href=\"http:\/\/25worldcountry.blogspot.com\">TTG<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><span class=pullquote style=\"padding-right: 8px; padding-left: 8px; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; font-size: 16pt; float: right; padding-bottom: 5px; margin: 20px; width: 189px; line-height: normal; padding-top: 5px; FONT-STYLE: normal; height: 134px; text-align: right; FONT-VARIANT: normal\">Most mainstream Indian papers are glorified scandal rags<\/span>.. the active blogging community in India is a shockingly tiny group&#8230; Their preoccupation nevertheless continues to be slamming and analysing a very wide variety of things in an attempt to display their intellectual might&#8230; Their favourite pastime remains MSM (blog speak for mainstream media) bashing, often without caring to provide substantiations and taking cover behind free speech platitude&#8230; \n<p><\/p>\n<p>&#8230; the 3rd annual Delhi bloggers meet just proved how big (or small) is the Indian blogosphere. Just four bloggers attended it, counting the host&#8230; &#8221;I have booked the entire section of the restaurant,&#8221; he added, pointing at the empty sofas reserved for an army of bloggers that he had expected&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The Indian blogosphere has a long way to go before it even comes near to achieving the influence of the American bloggers&#8230; We are yet to see the Instapundit of India or an Andrew Sullivan. And this is not lost on them. &#8221;We are the elite bloggers of India,&#8221; announced Tarun&#8230; [<a href=\"http:\/\/blogswatch.blogspot.com\/\">Link<\/a>]<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>&lt;<\/p>\n\n<p>p>There&#8217;s no law against snark, but the aggrieved organizer says the story is full of inaccuracies:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote>Barista is not a restaurant. I hadn&#8217;t booked the &#8220;entire section&#8221; of it. And there was ONE sofa, which could hold 2 people, and ONE chair that was empty&#8230; \n<p><\/p>\n<p>I SAID I WASN&#8217;T one of the ELITE bloggers of India, and went on to roll off a list of all the A-list dudes&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Now I know how celebrities must feel when they see their quotes in print. Is anything in the paper the truth? [<a href=\"http:\/\/25worldcountry.blogspot.com\/2005\/11\/betrayed.html\">Link<\/a>]<\/blockquote>\n\n<!--more-->\n\n<p>We&#8217;re <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/002471.html\">familiar with being misquoted<\/a>. TTG was a little frustrated at first, and amputation seems to be a running theme:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote style=\"margin-right: 0px\">\n<p><strike>&#8220;I will slice off your penis and feed it to you&#8221;<\/strike>&#8230; [<a href=\"http:\/\/codelust.blogspot.com\/2005\/11\/we-bloggers.html\">Link<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;If you steal from us we will cut off your hands&#8217; [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/002471.html\">Link<\/a>]<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Mmm, member flamb\u00c3\u00a9. <em>Someone<\/em> needs to meet <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Armin_Meiwes\">Armin Miewes<\/a> <img src=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/wink.gif\" align=absMiddle border=0> (<em>very <\/em>NSFW, and non-veg to boot). The real reason for his frustration will be familiar to all bloggers:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote style=\"margin-right: 0px\">\n<p>Had the journalist at least advertised our URLs, I would have forgiven him&#8230; [<a href=\"http:\/\/25worldcountry.blogspot.com\/2005\/11\/few-thoughts.html\">Link<\/a>]<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>No <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/copyright.html\">linkback<\/a> &#8212; ye bastards! Great Bong refocuses our attention on the real issue, crappy Indian papers. What kind of paper writes a snotty column on four people having coffee, calls it news and puts it on the front page of the Delhi section?<\/p>\n\n<blockquote>How do Indian newspapers (MSM) compare to US newspapers? When was the last time the <em>New York Times<\/em> had Robert De Niro&#8217;s birthday on its front page? When was the last time <em>Washington Post<\/em> debated whether Paris Hilton&#8217;s video footage is fake or not? When was the last time you opened <em>LA Times<\/em> and found at the right hand side of your screen a picture of a busty blonde in a push up with the caption &#8220;July Babes&#8221;? \n<p><\/p>\n<p>Besides Tehelka, which newspaper in recent memory has shown balls to go after the real bad guys? &#8230; most mainstream news outlets&#8230; are glorified scandal rags that report on lifestyle and spicy politics and what Bipasa Basu&#8217;s future acting assignments are. [<a href=\"http:\/\/greatbong.blogspot.com\/2005\/11\/insignificant-us.html\">Link<\/a>]<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><span class=related-posts-heading>Related posts:<\/span> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/002471.html\">If you steal from us we will cut off your hands<\/a>, <span class=related-posts><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/002061.html\"><span class=related-posts-title>&#8216;Oops!&#8230; I Did It Again&#8217;<\/span><\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/001528.html\"><span class=related-posts-title>&#8216;Times of India&#8217;: jewel of journalism (updated)<\/span><\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/001198.html\"><span class=related-posts-title>Times of India threatens blogger<\/span><\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/000962.html\"><span class=related-posts-title>&#8216;Times of India&#8217; pulls a Baghdad Bob<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A ToI reporter showed up to a small Delhi blogger meetup several days ago under an assumed name and did a Page Six\/Page 3-style takedown of our very own TTG: Most mainstream Indian papers are glorified scandal rags.. the active &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/15\/dastardly_deeds\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}