Cartoon adds to the fuel in Australia-India tensions

There has been a great deal of tension between Australian and India this week over a wave of attacks down under on Indian students over the last few months.

It culminated in the death of one victim last week and accusations have been flying over the racist nature of the attacks and that the Australian government is doing little to prevent them.

Now adding fuel to the fire is a cartoon,courtesy of Prasad Radhakrishnan in India's Mail Today



which Australia has condemened as deeply offensive

The caricature was in response to Victoria police stating that it was unclear yet if the murder of 21-year-old Indian student Nitin Garg in a West Footscray Park was racially motivated.
According to them, the attacks could be random acts by opportunistic criminals.

Hyerlocal hits India

Editor and Publisher report on the the Siasat Daily

The family-owned newspaper was founded exactly 60 years ago, and presents itself as "the most techno savvy Urdu newspaper" in the country. "Muslims are lagging in jobs, in education. We have to help our readers to feel more powerful, to be self-confident, as the illiteracy rate in our constituency is particularly high," comments news editor Amer Ali Khan

adding that

The most original endeavors, however, are Siasat's numerous extra-journalistic social activities, which encompass education (including computing, cooking classes and exam coaching) to health support, like the "Abid Ali Khan Eye Hospital", based in the old part of Hyderabad City. The publication was several times awarded - by Unesco among other - for its services to the community and in favor of girls education in particular.

Journalist who broke the story of the Dalai Lama's flight passes away

His name probably won't go down as one of the famous journalists of our time but

Veteran journalist Naresh Chandra Rajkhowa, who broke the news about the Dalai Lama’s flight from Tibet through Tawang in March 1959 and his seeking asylum in India, passed away at his Chandmari residence here on Monday. He was 87.

via The Hindu

Mr. Rajkhowa was also the first Indian journalist to have interviewed the Tibetan religious leader. The Dalai Lama’s request letter for asylum had reached Mr. Rajkhowa by mistake in Shillong, where he was based as the correspondent of the The Assam Tribune, a local English daily published from Guwahati.
The messenger, who carried the Dalai Lama’s request letter written in English, reached Mr. Rajkhowa instead of a government official to whom the letter was addressed and who was residing near the journalist’s residence.

Ht-Sans Serif

Newspaper success story.

Newspapers are not dying the world over but it appears that you have to look to the Indian Sub continent for success.

The FT reports that

Dainik Jagran, a Hindi language daily, has a circulation of more than 17m and a readership of 54.5m in India, according to the latest Indian Readership Survey. This comes on the back of the growing dominance in the country of Hindi language newspapers – four of the five most widely read newspapers in the country are in Hindi, a language that is spoken by 41 per cent of the country’s 1.2bn people

According to Robin Jeffrey, an academic and author of India’s Newspaper Revolution its success can be put down to politics and consumer capitalism.

“Politicised people seek information. Politically mobilised classes have expanded – [such as] the Bahujan Samaj Party [which represents lower caste groups],Proprietors and advertisers at the same time have sought more eyes across their products so they have localised content and pushed newspapers into the countryside.”

BBC team covering the Indian elections

via Sans Serif-

As they say

Nobody can accuse BBC of parachute journalism

Indian dreams

India has been on the radar as one of the developing markets that journalists may find work in.

After reading this piece in the Hindustan Times (ht-Sans Serif) I am not so sure.Entitled Why media suffers while movies, IPL prosper? the writer argues that

In India, the media survive not on subscriptions and viewer-driven revenue, but on advertising. If fewer people are buying goods and if there is a country-wide recession, then companies will slash their advertising budgets.

and adds that

Many publishing houses ventured into businesses and products they had no understanding of, believing that the revenue from their existing cash cows would increase so dramatically that they could subsidize losses in the new businesses.
That dream is now dead. That’s why some publications are closing down and others are certain to follow.

As for the IPL it seems to go from strength to strength although as it too survives on commercial sponsorship maybe it will too be facing difficult times ahead

Some trends in Indian publishing and maybe some opportunities

Over at Sans Serif,they identify some of the trends that are currently affecting the Indian media.

The eight trends identified are listed below:

1. English language publishing has disproportionate advertising revenues in regard to its readership in comparison to Indian language publications.

2.India is a low cover-price market, and the dominant revenue stream is advertising.

3. The yields from advertising are low compared to rates in other countries

4. Distribution is a challenge, though there are specialist distribution arms entering the market.

5. Indian language publishing is likely to see the most growth.

6.The Indian magazine industry continues to attract entrepreneurs, both in the digital space and print and publishing.

7. International flagship titles and home-grown brands exist and compete well in the same space.

8.The contract publishing business, in an era where brands wish to be media owners, is very under-leveraged in India.

Search engines not up to scratch

Martin Belam has done some quick work looking at the response of the search engines to the overnight news from Mumbai.

His conclusion......"they are not performing very well"

Google has says Martin

some news results inserted into the one word search for 'mumbai', but they are not in the top slot. Searching for 'india' had the story down in fifth place, underneath some video content unrelated to the attack.

and as for Yahoo

The extensive terrorist attacks haven't yet managed to dislodge a story about George W. Bush and Thanksgiving turkey from the UK homepage

Meanwhile according to Dad blog

the Indian government asking for live Twitter updates to cease to protect their operations. For all sorts of reasons, this seems to be significant.

You can get tweets at #Mumbai at Mumbai

Forget Brand-what about other threatened species?

If you thought that here in the UK the media have been far too obsessed with the Andrew Sachs,Brand and Ross affair,it seems that other countries media also focus on the wrong issues.

Over at Newswatch India they report that

The release of the IUCN Red List (of threatened species) in Barcelona, Spain earlier this month generated only 35 news stories across Indian news outlets. The arrest of 230-odd people at a rave party in Mumbai (which happened on the same day, October 6) generated 93 stories in the first two days of the incident alone.
Most news establishments also failed to present the issue of species extinction in the Indian context. There were only three distinct news items which could be seen as India-centric stories by Indian news outlets. The Press Trust of India (PTI) story about 49 mammals facing grave threats of extinction was carried by three news outlets. The Hindu (republished by Zee News) and the Assam Tribune published localised stories.

Murdoch puts faith in the Indian media market

Rupert Murdoch's decision to expand his operation into India shows that he regards the sub continent as one of the areas of the world in which the media is expanding.

It was announced yesterday that he is to invest $100 in six regional Tv stations and according to Ft.com

The new TV channels, which will be aired in six cities, will help News Corp's Star TV channel tap into India's growing retail advertising sector, which depends heavily on regional media outlets.

It is one of the few areas where Tv advertising revenues are growing,2007 saw a growth rate of 85 and the next four years are forecast to growth in the media around
12%

How a hoax bemused the Indian press

A great story coming out of India on how a hoax managed to take over many of the countries newspapers

On Sunday, almost every newspaper reported the arrest of Johann Bach, an 88-year-old Nazi war criminal, in the jungles of Khanapur, close to Goa, on Saturday.
A classified advertisement inserted by the “Waffen SS” fugitive to sell an 18th century piano was supposed to have led Perus Narkp detectives to the “senior adjutant” who reportedly had a role in the “extermination” of 12,000 Jews at the Marsha Tikash Whanaab concentration camp in East Berlin

Reports Churamuri

Unfortunately it was all a hoax and as the author says

Maybe to show how gullible journalists have become in this age of instant news and even more instant analysis. Maybe to show how little research and background checking goes into modern-day reporting populated by greenhorns barely out of their teens. Maybe to show what a bunch of cultural ignoramuses we are, with scarcely any knowledge of music, Indian or western.

Indian editorial piece leads to prosecution

Sans Serif writes a good post about what he refers to as a disgraceful assaault on media freedom.

It concerns an opinion piece which appeared in the Times of India earlier this year.

This is the part which is causing the problems

Recovering Gujarat from its urban middle class will not be easy. The class has found in militant religious nationalism a new self-respect and a new virtual identity as a martial community, the way Bengali babus, Maharashtrian Brahmins and Kashmiri Muslims at different times have sought salvation in violence. In Gujarat this class has smelt blood, for it does not have to do the killings but can plan, finance and coordinate them with impunity. The actual killers are the lowest of the low, mostly tribals and Dalits. The middle class controls the media and education, which have become hate factories in recent times. And they receive spirited support from most non-resident Indians who, at a safe distance from India, can afford to be more nationalist, bloodthirsty, and irresponsible.”

The writer Ashi Nandi now finds himself the case of a criminal action launched by the Indian government and is charged with creating amnosity between communities.

Back to basics

Via Sans Serif:

A brilliant article on a handwriiten India newspaper facing an uncertain future.The paper is the Musulman,a daily which is written using calligraphy quills by six people

Written in Urdu it

takes three hours using a pen, ink and ruler to
transform a sheet of paper into news and art. "

A Muslim newspaper,it has a circulation of 20,000 based in Chennai

"For centuries, handwriting was the definitive mark of
social status, education and liberal values in India. Calligraphers mastered the
swooping Urdu script in ivory-tower institutions and penned copies of the Koran
for wealthy patrons. The pinnacle of a katib's achievement meant a seat at court
and a chance to earn the sultan's ear"

But now it is facing hard times as Editor-in-Chief Syed Fazlulla at the age of 76 approaches retirement and there is nobody up and coming to take his role over as

The art of Urdu calligraphy is a fast-fading
tradition

.

Let's hope that this tradition long continues