As a CNN regular, I have always marvelled at their readiness to not just pick important stories from rival channels but also give them full credit and play in their own bulletins. That’s such a rarity in our own country. Here, if one channel or publication comes up with a national scoop, the others will pretend as if nothing happened for as along as they can avoid it. When they can’t, they will simply pick the story and run with it like it is the fruit of their “exclusive” labour (TV channels can do this with consummate ease) or simply jump into it without giving due credit to the publication/channel that broke the story.

Hundreds of great stories have died a premature death in our country because media rivalry prevents one from picking up and following the other’s scoops.

 This is about one such story in the Times of India: “Jairam (Ramesh) for major shift in climate; Writes to PM that India should junk Kyoto Pact, accept emission curbs (Delhi edition lead, Monday, Oct 19). It quoted from the Environment minister’s October 13 letter to make the point that Jairam was proposing a complete reversal of India’s position. Just two months ahead of the Copenhagen talks this attempted reversal was like the Pokhran of India’s climate change with national and international reverberations.

This story needed to be followed up by everybody because if the shift happens, it can have long time implications for India’s growth story. As it happened, all newspapers followed it (I did not track the channels on this) but only to dismiss it and deny TOI the credit for a rare scoop.

Honestly speaking, they were only paying back TOI in kind because it was the TOI which started the trend of not naming any brand in its pages other than its own. Till about the late 80s or early 90s all newspapers extended the journalistic courtesy of acknowledging each others’ scoops by naming the rival which scooped them, a sort of professional doffing of hat for a good job well done.

The TOI threw this tradition to the winds because it did not want lesser papers to benefit from its unmatched and ever-expanding reach. It thus introduced us to such pathetic euphemisms as “reports in a newspaper”, “reports in a section of the press”, etc. Over the next couple of years, one by one all papers started returning the favour to TOI. So, no sympathies for TOI; if anything they deserve it.

But this is not about the TOI, this is about the readers of the other papers. The allegiance of every media organisation is to the paying reader who must get the correct picture on matters of national and international importance. The Jairam Ramesh story was one such. It talked about the crucial issue of climate change and India’s commitments to emission cuts that would impact our future for decades, if not centuries.

Any newspaper that claims to be a credible medium of information on serious national issues had an obligation to its readers to join the story and examine if indeed India was on the cusp of a drastic change in stance on climate change, why it was changing, what factors have caused the shift and whether it would be in India’s interest or otherwise. None of that happened.

The Hindustan Times, TOI’s principal rival in Delhi, took it upon itself to rubbish the TOI’s report in four short paragraphs on page 1 the following day (Tuesday, Oct 20, Delhi edition). In a “we-would-rather-believe-a-minister-than-the-TOI” kind of tone, it dismissed the TOI’s “major shift” claim by calling it just a “nuanced shift”. Of course, it cut out all references to the political uproar the TOI’s report caused in the Congress party and the Opposition and the extreme discomfiture to Jairam that caused him to issue feeble retractions.

The HT report neither named TOI nor referred to its previous day’s scoop. So there was absolutely no provocation, no context and no reason why it occupied costly real estate on page 1. But there it was, the HT, appearing more eager than Jairam to deny the TOI story.

I am not saying that it was HT’s job to validate TOI’s story. But once Jairam himself did not deny the existence of the letter or the contents of it as reported by TOI, it needed to quiz Jairam on his claim that TOI got it all wrong, that he was not laying the ground for a shift in India’s stand. For that it needed to interrogate Jairam and expose TOI’s poor skills at English comprehension. Instead it chose to take Jairam at his word and that’s just not good enough.

That sad narrative repeated itself in The Hindu and The Indian Express, too. They also took the HT route to this story of tectonic shift in India’s position by simply parroting Jairam’s protestations without bothering to put him through the trouble of mandatory questioning. Both the papers, of course, did not name the TOI.

Mail Today was one paper that showed it had a mind of its own. In a detailed report titled “New Delhi’s green policy gets fuzzy” it quoted Jairam’s earlier letters and public utterances to show that something was definitely up. But though it was less believing of Jairam, it refrained from naming the TOI preferring to say “Jairam…was reported to have written to the PM”.

The best coverage of the political avalanche after the TOI story came from one of India’s most transparent and ethical newspapers, Mint. There were many lessons for the big daddies from the way this baby of a newspaper covered the story. Firstly, it did not shy away from acknowledging the TOI’s scoop. Secondly, it refused to buy Jairam’s version rubbishing TOI. Thirdly, it quoted extensively from its own earlier interviews with Jairam wherein he had clearly articulated the same major shifts that the TOI said he recommended to the PM. And lastly, it did such a detailed story in such simple terms that even a climate change ignoramus such as me understood the whole issue.

So, I just have this to tell HT. If you have to copy anything from any paper, copy the ethics, the efficiency, the transparency and the new spirit of journalism from your own Mint, not the opacity of the Times of India.

Time to change this journalism of jealousy. Your reader deserves better.

Things are looking up at the Time of India. The country’s biggest and richest media house, which rang the alarm bells first with an unprecedented round of blood-letting last year, has just announced the end of recession. Ravi Dhariwal, CEO, wrote an endearing letter to all his staff to inform them that the management has decided to put some money in their pockets ahead of Diwali, a sort of bonus payout.

That is great news, not just for the Times staffers, but all of us in the media because when TOI cut costs, salaries and careers, all with equal remorselessness, that was enough excuse for many lesser mortals to blindly follow suit. So, the TOI retracing its steps is decidedly good news because there’s a chance the others might ape the TOI once again.

Except that this time, too, you definitely don’t want your managements to take the TOI’s cue. To understand why, first read some excerpts from Dhariwal’s letter:

“Dear Friends, Last time I wrote to you, a few months ago, we were in the midst of a perfect storm. On the back of astronomical newsprint prices, and our own expansion, our costs had galloped. As this was happening, Advertising revenues skid on fears of an impending recession. For the first time in many years, we saw a severe margin compression. For a few months we actually lost money. It was clear that we needed to take a serious course correction.

“We took several measures to restore the company back to some semblance of financial health. We cut unnecessary expenditures, postponed some of our future projects, scouted the world for cheaper newsprint and also trimmed our organization. Looking back, it was one of the most difficult periods in my career…

“All-in-all, I feel a lot more optimistic about our future, even in the short and medium term… The way you all rallied forth makes me absolutely sure.

“With this background, I am happy to inform you that our VC (Samir Jain) and our MD (Vineet Jain) have asked me to do something very pleasant. We are going to make an advance pay out of 1/3rd of the TVP (target variable pay) amount planned for the year 2009-10. You will receive this soon, in the next few days. This amount will be adjusted once we complete the year closing in July 2010 and work out the TVP due to us as per company policy. I am sure this money is welcome in our pocket. I also think this is a measure of our combined optimism about our future. I thought I should share this with you before we hit the festive season.”

Let’s understand “the very pleasant” bit a little better. The Times of India, sitting on profits of 150 years plus, cuts staff salaries across the board because the company “actually lost money” for “a few months” and decides to pay out 1/3^rd bonus of the next year in advance, to be adjusted later. Alternatively put, when the Times of India hurts, it takes staff salaries back to previous year’s levels and when it gets generous, it gives them one-third of one-tenth of their future earnings (assuming average variable pay is 10%)!

And the staff is supposed to be ecstatic because the “money is welcome in the pockets” before they “hit the festive season”. Yes, guys, now go and shop till you drop. What a mean trick! It would have achieved nothing more than to open old wounds of the staff. If managements of other media houses will not copy the TOI this time, it must be because such lack of tact and grace must be hard to match. 

Some would argue that this is between the TOI management and their staff so it’s none of our business. But it is. It is our business because the Times of India is the country’s most widely consumed media and what it writes in times of national crises such as recession is critical to us. The media, led by the Times of India, needed to examine how much of the bad times corporate India faced was because of actual recessionary pressures and question how much of it was caused by corporate day-dreaming, mindless expansions and outright greed. It needed to question why it is always that the top screws up, but the bottom pays up.

But none of that happened because the media houses, led by the TOI, were themselves guilty of committing the same grave errors at the top for which the staff at the lowest end paid dearly. For example, it was the Private Treaties that delivered the biggest blow to the TOI’s health. The top thought up the Private Treaties route to riches. We all know who paid when the crisis came.

Similarly, NDTV went into all kinds of unwise expansion plans and sunk in hundreds of crore in bad projects. While it ended up being no where in its new businesses, it became an also ran in every news segment (English, Hindi and Business news) and completely botched up its MetroNation project. And when recession came along, it became a happy excuse to sack dozens of lower staff while not one CEO got the boot. In fact, in the middle of the sacking mayhem, it hired a sort of overall boss for NDTV Profit whose compensation could have equalled the cost of a dozen sacked employees or more elsewhere in the group.

That story repeated itself even in organisations that were not bleeding. AajTak and Zee News, the only two channels at the national level consistently raking in profits, held up hikes and cut back salaries respectively. Both these companies returned handsome profits even during recession but that has meant little good news for the staff (though Zee I know has reversed the 10 to 20 % salary cut). Little wonder then that corporate India’s profligacy and foolishness, that must have contributed in equal measure to their near-death experience of last year, went completely unquestioned by the media as a whole.

So, Mr Dhariwal, if your staff sees nothing “very pleasant” in your Diwali Dhamaka, don’t take it personally. You enjoy your Diwali.

 In 1987 the Times of India set in motion a process of deconstructing the Indian newspaper as we knew it up until then with the launch of the rather wordy Sesquicentennial (150^th birthday) Celebrations. Even though journalism became collateral damage (some would say it was the primary target) in its relentless march to superstardom, the Times of India did much more than just deconstruct the newspaper. It changed the game totally and completely.

It shelved the prevailing trend of periodic cover price increases with invitation pricing. It killed the standard 16/20-page paper forever with the fat infotainment supplements. It created a whole new generation of young readers. It hooked the women on to the newspaper, thus far a male bastion. It expanded the market like never before, made multiple-paper homes a possibility and introduced the concept of marketing and branding to the newspaper industry.

And above all, it changed the revenue model of the newspaper. In an era of tightly controlled circulations, it taught a hesitant industry to let go, pile up the readership numbers and make the advertiser pay up for the expanded reach. Whatever it did to journalism and content, it cannot be denied that more newspapers in India became profitable ventures because the Times of India showed them the way to the bank.

The bedrock of all the change was, of course, Samir Jain’s definition of news as the space between advertisements. That meant news took a severe beating. Style took precedence over substance and as the printed word competed for the attention of the 90’s MTV generation and today’s GenX, news became a collection of bits, bites and nuggets (the assumption being that nobody has time for more than 300 words). Between page 3, PR and pure advertising in the form of Medianet and Private Treaties, news was sent on a long holiday. 

That is why the Crest edition of the Times of India, launched three Saturdays ago, is such a surprise. It is a complete departure from everything that the Times of India has stood for in the last two decades.

Departure 1: News is NOT the space between advertisements. At least, not from the evidence of the first two editions of the Crest. Never before has Times of India given so much acreage for news. I missed the first edition but in the second, almost all ads were right hand full pages and text flowed on the left hand pages unhindered.

Departure 2: All readers are not consumers of knick-knacks. There is such a person as the consumer of long form journalism: The cover story on China spanned three pages and the spotlight story (Up Close) on Naxalism spread over two full pages. Up until now, if you wrote any more than 500 words in the Times of India you went home and emptied the sleeping pills bottle because the Jains would shoot you down the next morning anyway.

Departure 3: There is such a person as the consumer of journalism, full stop. Short or long, didn’t matter. All these years, the Times of India’s mantra was nobody cared for journalism except the journalist.

Departure 4: There is such a person as the consumer willing to pay top dollar for good content. It was the Times of India that increased page-count and decreased cover price so much that the readers could make more money by selling the paper in waste than get value by reading it. At Rs 6 for about 40 pages, Crest can proudly claim to the paper that is worth more than its weight in waste.

 The sum and total of these deviations or the breaking news of the month then is this: the Times of India is once again seeing merit in the power of content, even if only once a week. For a paper that led the revolution in trivialising news and dumbing down the newspaper, that’s no mean reversal, it is almost like reversing time itself or like the Times of India doing to journalism what the US is doing to Iraq: rebuilding the country after bombing it out of shape (and making money either way).

Twenty-two years ago, it was the Times of India that sniffed the restlessness of the upwardly mobile Indian and his exasperation with the politics-obsessed news business and gave the industry two decades of stunning growth. Twenty-two years later, it is again sensing an opportunity. Crest suggests a clear shift in the philosophy of the Times of India. That it is sniffing the future again.

It is too early to talk about the quality of the content of Crest. I definitely did not see sterling writing but quite liked the elegant, under-designed look of the paper and just loved the green of the masthead. Again, it highlights the shift in philosophy: substance over style. To me that is even more stunning because the Crest did not fall into the design dungeon like the Hindustan Times did a few months ago.

The HT decided to redesign an already well-designed paper without any great content upgrade. It’s been dressed up like a Christmas tree and the cherry-picking in the headlines (one or two words in red) is a meaningless exercise in trying to lend gravitas where none exists.

The industry will, of course, watch the progress of Crest with interest. I think we need stylishly delivered substance, long form journalism and brilliant writing more often than once a week, more like every day of the week. That is what will keep the inveterate lover of the printed word wedded to it. That is what will keep newspapers in business in an increasingly wired world.

So, I think: For more papers to believe in the power of content, it is time.

So the government wants to file an FIR against two reporters of the Times of India for their report which said two ITBP jawans were injured in firing by the Chinese army.

The government claims that the report was wrong, that there was no firing by the Chinese and hence no question of any Indian soldier getting injured.

 Filing an FIR is definitely an extreme form of redressal but when journalists go wrong they must be prepared to face the consequences. If they need to go to court to prove their story, they must.

 Accountability demands that they take that trouble. But the problem here is not about accountability but about trust. When it comes to “trust” I would much rather go with the media, warts and all, rather than with the government. It’s not difficult for governments to destroy some records and create yet others when the heat is on. And when the matter relates to China the heat is really on because we have a simple China policy: the-wet-our-pants policy.

 Anyway, we needn’t take the government’s threatening noises too seriously. The lead report in The Hindu had two purposes: One, to tell our “friendly” neighbourhood bully that he is still the “dada” in the area and much as some television channels might want India to wipe out China, we shall never forget 1962, thank you. And, two, to tell the Indian media to back off because this time the frenzy seemed to have spread even to print. That done and the media completely silenced (it will be a while before you hear about Chinese transgressions again), we can rest assured that we have heard the last about the FIR against the Times reporters.

I brought up the FIR stuff not because the freedom of press was at stake (even the TOI did not seem to mind it, why would I?). I brought it up to point out the absurdity of threatening to sue two reporters for a supposedly wrong report just two weeks after two news channels reported complete lies during the YSR episode. (Times Now said their reporter had reached “the exact spot” of the crash. India TV reported authoritatively that YSR was alive and their source had personally spoken to him.)

Twenty days after the two lies, a lot has happened. The I&B Secretary met the National Broadcasters Association (NBA), the body that has taken upon itself the responsibility of self-regulation of TV news; I&B Minister Ambica Soni met the Broadcast Editors Association (BEA), the newly formed body to ensure responsible journalism; and the NBA had its board meeting. I’m not privy to what happened but at all these meetings the question of self-regulation must have come up. It always does. Like no meeting is complete without agreeing to meet again, no NBA meeting is complete without driving one more nail into the coffin of self-regulation.

Yes, a lot has happened since, except what needed to have happened: action against the two channels which are members of the NBA. I have not even heard of a reprimand from the NBA’s Disputes Redressal Authority headed by Justice J S Varma who pulled up India TV earlier for a far lesser “crime” and has since gone into deep slumber. Forget about Justice Varma, I’ll be stunned if even an internal memo has been issued in these channels pulling up people responsible or advising caution for future.

The net result of all that has happened, actually not happened, is that the two channels got away without as much as an apology to their viewers. If the cost of telling blatant lies is guaranteed and instant industry amnesia, you can bet your life that we have not seen the last lie on television. All the NBAs and BEAs are only organisations that strive to save their skins.

Yes, television channels self-regulate. They “regulate” their urge to report an offending competitor for its misdemeanors because they expect the latter to look the other way when they are themselves in the box.

Hopefully, some day not too far into the future, Amibca Soni will read this unwritten code of NBA’s silence.

But the good thing about TV is: That in all the noise that goes by the name of Hindi news, there’s a show that is as soothing as Vinod Dua Live (NDTV India, 8 pm). Dua always used to read the news at this hour but it was turned into his show in January. Dua talks unhurriedly, works on his script (rather than wing it as he goes along), picks fairly good news stories, avoids screaming headlines and, this is unbelievable, keeps all that threatening, stolen music completely out. The show is like still waters in a storm, as unlikely and as welcoming. Hope enough whiners like me watch it to make it work…I’m told it’s having problems at the Wednesday box office.