The Paper Estate Boom

There was a time when newspapers not only broke news; they even linked people and freed nations. For example, Sri Aurobindo Ghose, one of India's greatest sons, channelised his nationalist sentiments towards the greater cause of Indian Independence through the daily and weeklies he edited. What he wrote was of so much concern to the British that, even when he was long out of the extremism he had embraced earlier, Lord Minto went on record saying - "I can only repeat that he is the most dangerous man we have to reckon with."

It is said that editors and columnists were responsible for their positions and newspapers led the societal evolution. I am not sure whether it is after the permeation of the television and the internet with, so to say, the human bloodstream, or this being the time where only sensationalism sells - but newspapers today are defnitely not even the shadow of what they used to be in their responsibilities.

Each morning (well, you know it's almost afternoon when I get up, but I have a look at it the first thing each day) when I have a cursory glance through the pages of the Times of India, I know I am not missing much. More often than not, just browsing through the front page, the sports pages, the international page and the comic strips are what I do with the TOI. I hardly recall a really thought-provoking article or series being printed there. Even their seemingly patriotic 'Lead India' campaign is basically a means to fill the coffers through strategic marketing and publicity. Their sports page has also lost valuable space to what the wives and girlfriends (they actually use the word 'WAGs' for this!) of our sporting heroes are upto. I remember around fifteen years ago, when The Asian Age was launched - MJ Akbar resorted to bringing a tabloid in the size of a newspaper daily at your doorstep.

It was only yesterday - I fetched the TOI to read about Benazir Bhutto's assassination, her life and her times. The coverage was decent but on a day when Dhirubhai Ambani was born 'to change the face of India', she had to be pushed to start from Page 3. The first two pages were bought out well ahead - and we had to see a full-blown, smiling Dhirubhai on the cover. Again, in an attempt to showcase him as the messiah of the masses when honestly I feel whatever he had done was only to build a business empire with an acumen that was so much ahead of his times - his lifetime was written, ludicrously, as 28.12.1932 - Eternity. I don't think someone wrote like that even for Jesus Christ.

"Add the colours and spice it up
Sure, then, it is to sell."
"What about the reader, Mr. Editor?"
"Just ask him to go to hell!"