Media Newsletter
GujaratGlobal
Issue 32
 October 31, 2008
Greetings!

This Newsletter from the GujaratGlobal  brings to you the latest happening in the media particularly in Gujarat, whats hot and whats not , who's in and who's out , you want it and you get it here !This newsletter is about people who craft voice and image of others. It is about the real newsmakers.
 
 

                    Editor.....Protest


Earlier, I had written about legal cases against websites and blogs as an indicator of the fact that online media is now being accepted as a force to reckon with. The case of harassment of Sushil Singh of Gossip Adda Dot Com is a glaring example of this growing power of online media, much wider and effective than traditional print media.
This has led to a very positive development of protest by a vocal group of people associated with the online media. A committee has been formed to highlight the issue and stand by Sushil Singh. As a member of the Committee, my support to the cause is known through various news items and e mails, the committee has brought out. Here I express my support for Sushil Singh with the phrase "I protest".
In this case, gossip adda had a news item that Lucknow edition of Hindustan had wrong photograph in the news about the death of its owner. Certainly it was a great blunder which can never be dismissed off as a routine game of printer's devil. The website also talked about the farewell bash of a senior officer of the Hindustan at a time when the death of the owner was being mourned.
As the news became talk of the media, a staffer lodged a complaint with police that Sushil wanted money to withdraw the news from the portal and Lucknow police rushed to Delhi to arrest Sushil. It led to protests by a strong group of journalists predominantly from on line media and the arrests has been put off at least for the time being. Yashwant Singh of Bhadas and several senior journalists are mobilising support of others for such a misuse of law with the help of police
The time has come when media should have a strong platform to fight such issues in the interest of media itself. I appeal to friends in media to help develop such a platform.
This issue has lot of interesting masala ranging from a write up on Press Club of India to Jumbo press conference of Bapu


Have A Happy Reading.


With love  

Yogesh Sharma

Gujarat Global
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Sunil Dang on Prasar Bharati Board
 
Journalists Sunil Dang has been inducted as part time member of the Prasar Bharti Board along with Retd Major General Utpal Chattopadhayay With this the Board is technically complete. They have come in place of Chitra Mudgil and ML Mehta.
 
Sunil has been associated with number of journalists' organisations. He is former president of the Indian Language Newspaper Association and is founder promoter of the Newspaper Editors' Society, a body of small and medium newspapers.

The other part time members on the Board are RN Bisaria, Sunil Kapoor (who was given an extension), George Verghese and Mamata Shanker. A Bhatnagar is its Chairman
The first task of the board is to decide on two regular ex-officio members on the Board in the form of full time DG Doordarshan and full time DG AIR. These two key posts have been lying vacant for a long time. There has been no regular DG for Doordarshan ever since former DG Naveen Kumar completed his tenure about two years back.

The post of DG AIR has also been lying vacant for over two years after the departure of Brajeshwar Singh. Currently, Jiya Lal is holding the temporary charge of DG AIR since last month.
Absence of regular DG of AIR and Doordarshan has been a very important issue as it has seriously affected country's these two premier media organisations.
 
Even the media division is headless. Ever since Prasar Bharati's Media Head (General Manager PR), Manish Desai, got transferred to the Press Information Bureau, Mumbai, a year back, it is vacant. Doordarshan's media division, too, is headless after Surat Misra, (Deputy Director PR) left last month.

Pushpendra panel sweeps PCI elections
Puspendra
 
Kulshrestra has been reelected Secretary General of the Press Club of India for the third time. It was a show of strength by Pushpendra who is probably the most controversial person on this all powerful post of the PCI. His team will steer the PCI in its Golden Jubilee year. It will also start work on the construction of the new building of the PCI on Rajendra Prasad road.
 
He polled 589 votes, defeating Javed Faridi, Secretary General of the Delhi Union of Journalists (252 votes) in a four-cornered contest. The others were women candidates Seema Kiran and Karuna Madan
Parvez Ahmed, the outgoing Vice-President of the Press Club of India, has been elected as the new President of the Club for the year 2008-09 in the elections held on October 19. Ahmed of ARY One World News of Dubai polled 458 votes, defeating his nearest rival, Neelam Mahajan Singh, a veteran broadcast journalist, in a four-cornered contest. Singh polled 330 votes.
 
Jayanta Bhattacharya of Times Now and Narendra Bhalla of Hindi Outlook have been elected as Vice-Presidents, while Nadeem Ahmed Kazzmi of NDTV is the new Treasurer of the Club.
The elected members of the executive committee include Ajay Verma, Anand Kumar, Anoop Saxena, Arun Jetli, Aruna Singh, Ashish Kumar Singh, Ashok Wankhade, Avtar Negi, Jagdish Yadav, KN Joshi, Manas Banerjee, Pramod Kumar, Pramod Pushkarna, Ritu Verma, Savita Srivastava, and Vijay Shankar Chaturvedi.

Media Movements

Mori heads VOI in Gujarat
 

Satish Mori has joined Voice of India to head its Gujarat operations. Haresh Jhala is the only staff Mori has to start VOI operations in Gujarat afresh. In the last two months, all the old staff of VOI has left the channel which is facing severe image crisis all over the country.
Mori has worked in both print and electronic media. Before joining VOI, he was with ETV. He has also worked with DECU of Space Application Centre.
 
Kamran joins IE, Ahmedabad
 

Kamran has returned to Indian Express, the newspaper with which he started his career as a journalist. He was with Daily Mail before starting second inning with IE at Ahmedabad .
 
Roshan Tolani joins IE Delhi 
 
 
Roshan Tolani is to join Indian Express Delhi as Senior Copy Editor. He was with DNA as Chief Sub Editor.
Roshan started his career with the Indian Express in 1987. He has also worked in the education field and was the Editor of Navneet Publications also
 
Two in one this time
 
Friends due to un avoidable technical reasons, the news letter couldnot be released last week. However this buly issue is two in one.
 
Jumbo press conference of Bapu

 
 
This Sunday, Union Textile Minister Shankarsinh Vaghela had media interaction in Ahmedabad. Charismatic crowd puller Vaghela is popularly called Bapu which indicates that he is Kshatriya and it has nothing about of Gandhi Bapu. No doubt both belong to Gujarat.
 
Bapu's press conferences always attract crowd of journalists and even the most informal interaction gives spicy copy.  This Sunday media interaction had 247 journalists! All calculations of managers of Bapu went haywire. Lunch was ordered for 125 and gifts were for 100 media personnel using all possibilities of additional number.
 
Consequently, many, including Bapu's close confident Member Parliament Madhusudan Mistry, had to wait for the plate and circuit house manager Vaghela had tough time managing smooth food supply at the dining table. Bapu asked his crisis managers to spread a word among journalists that gift would reach them later.
 
Media men knew that Bapu would keep his word and Bapu did. Next day all 247 media persons notwithstanding the number of journalists from an organisation got their due. There were as many as three reporters from one newspaper. And such cases were not rare. But Bapu told his managers to give gifts to all.
 
Infact Shankarsinh Vaghela's love for media led to such a massive crowd at his Sunday interaction. He is generous in giving gifts to journalists without any discrimination. In August this year, journalists had a surprise from Bapu. He was not happy with the gift organisers of a function had given to journalists. It was a small thermos flask much below the status of Bapu who had inaugurated the programme.
 
He ordered that each media person should be given a saree. It was to coincide with the spirit of Rakshabandan. The organiser willingly gave saree to each of the Mediamen who had attended the inaugural function. It is said that the cost of each saree was around Rs 2500. The story of the Rakshabandan conference spread like wild fire and so his press conference had an unprecedented crowd of 247.
 
There were some journalists from the so called big banners who had even asked organisers that why they were not invited! This time Bapu gave costly jute bag to journalists with bed sheets and pillow covers! Certainly it was a good Diwali gift from Bapu in the election year. Even otherwise, Bapu keeps media in good humor.
He would ask most journalists Khadu (had food) Pidhu (drank water). But the enigmatic smile carrying these words suggests something different and Bapu strikes a note of familiarity with journalists who can't resist a return smile to Bapu.
    Fourth M dimension of Nano
 
Nano has become talk of media. All kind of stories are flooding pages of newspapers of Gujarat, particularly Ahmedabad. Obviously, nano talk among journalists is like talking about weather! Here is an interesting interaction some big guns of media had recently in Ahmedabad. Incident is 100 percent real; identity is protected in the interest of fraternity.
 
Generally many top guns of journalism are not seen at any function. But it was a rare incident in Ahmedabad. As it happened all started talking about reporting of Nano car in different newspapers. A great gun known for his proximity with Chief Minister Narendra Modi had interesting anecdotes he had shared with Modi and Tata.
 
He said that when he asked about Congress leader Modhwadia's opposition to Nano , Modi said that Tata who described Mamta as bad M was not aware that there is bad M in Gujarat also. So Nano which has good Modi and bad Mamta has bad Modhwadia also.

When someone talks about Nano reporting, Times of India is the ultimate centre of discussion. Full page plus Nano reporting!
The top gun described TOI Nano reporting as the latest in its outburst series like torrent of reporting on Patan rape case and Ahmedabad Police Commissioner O P Mathur episode which ultimately led Mathur slapping half a dozen cases against TOI. This made another top gun chirp in. He said that we must ask Mathur how he feels about Nano reporting. Someone remarked he would say it is His Master's Voice.
This top gun happens to be close to both Modi and Mathur. He said that the Nano reporting of TOI has Mathur effect!!!! This is the Fourth M Dimension of Nano story.


 
TRP centric Rajat Sharma
 

Rajat Sharma of Aap ki Adalat f ame is now moving round the country defending his India TV mythological escapades. He was in Ahmedabad and he was quite candid before journalists that bizarre shows of India TV were purely TRP centric. He has an interesting story about his TRP mania

In initial days celebrities used to refuse to give appointment to India TV reporters because it was seventh on the TRP ladder. And so he hit upon the idea of focusing on miracle and bizarre themes and he claims that now he is on the second position on the TRP ladder and soon he will be at its top.

In reply to a variety of questions about the content of Hindi channels, Rajat has only one reply, Hindi viewers do not like this. He says Hindi viewers do not like to see even Amitabh Bacchan. There is not eye ball quota for politicians among the viewers of Hindi channels, he further claims. Who sees Hindi programmes of Discovery and National, he asks.
For him only his channel programmes exist!!!

 Gujarat Media Club closes Ahmedabad office

Gujarat Media Club has closed down its Ahmedabad office. The only office of the Club has now been shifted to Gandhinagar at the address which is the registered office of the Club under the Companies Act.
No official announcement has been made about the move. The new address was mentioned in a routine communiqué about a programme of the GMC this month.
Club office bearer Sanjay Pande confirms the change in the venue and says that the decision is purely an economy measure. He says that the office with computers and some refreshment facility had less than one visitor a day. In such a situation, there is no fun in incurring expenses on running the club.
All members who were present at a function of the club were given their ID cards for the current financial year at the venue.
The activities of the one year old GMC are presently limited only to Ahmedabad.
 
 
Is Business Standard a sinking ship?
 

After the unceremonious closure of its Gujarati editions from Rajkot and Ahmedabad, Business Standard is again in news. Last week, its Resident Editor Harit Mehta joined Times Group as Assistant Editor Upcountry at Ahmedabad. TOI Ahmedabad announced arrival of its old staffer Harit with byline copies.
All kind of rumours are rife about Harit's shifting to TOI. Gujarati editions of BS were closed during his brief tenure.
This has also led to speculations of the beginning of exit of the BS from Gujarat and the newspaper chain being taken over by some other group. This move is in air for almost a year.
The most salient feature of the BS is its equity without the traditional infrastructure of its own offices.

Press Club of India, more than a BAR
 

(Darshan Desai who is with the North India Bureau of Indo Asian News Service has sent this piece in response to edit on PCI in the last newsletter. A frequent visitor to PCI when in Delhi, Darshan is presently posted in Lucknow)  
 
You are partly correct in saying that the Press Club of India (of India!!) has been reduced to a watering hole. Many well-meaning journalists have stopped their climb up the Raisina Hill to get high, while majority of those who reach the high there are found falling over each other by the time the bell rings 11 p.m. For the uninitiated, Raisina Hill is where the Press Club of India (India!!) is located and for their information, it isn't a hill any longer.
 
I said partly correct for it is still the only evening destination for many mid-career journalists who go there to unwind after a real hard day's work. After all, they don't have the luxury of a membership of the India International Centre or the Foreign Journalists' Club where the so-called Who's Who of Indian journalism are found, behaving only slightly differently from the proletariat at the PCI.  
 
And since we all know the salaries these mid-career reporters take home, cheap (I would say cheaper) liquor and quality food are the only resource. For many mid-career journalists who stay alone in Delhi, the PCI is the only resting abode. 
 
I know many such journos who just hate the idea of heading for the PCI but are still there for all the obvious reasons. And if you sit with them, there is often stimulating discussion and meaningful talk. At the PCI, it often is about who you sit with and who you just wave off.
 
At the same time, there is no doubt there are fewer -and fewer-actually-working journalists found there. Meet the Press still happens there, and there are occasional painting exhibitions, seminars and workshops being conducted there. 
 
Stimulating discussions? Boss, there is overall degeneration in all the four estates of this country and, mercifully, the media ranks the fourth in the fall. Over to the Hill of Raisina!!
 
 
"Happiness is nothing more than a good health and a bad memory"



With Love,
 
Yogesh Sharma
GujaratGlobal.com