Monday, April 02, 2007

In the times of TOI

On this Sunday, I happened to read Times of India. There is a small supplement called Time, we get these days. And guess who we had this time? It was a male stripper. The punchline was 'The confession of a male stripper'.
I am reading TOI from last 5 years. But from last 1-2 years I could see a debacle in its overall quality. TOI was never well-known for its editorials. I read it just for the sake of reading. I am living with my roomies and all of them except me love Times. So, I fall in minority.
If we look at past 2 years of TOI, we could see a drastic change. Earlier there were no Page-3 news, neither were useless articles gossiping Bollywood/Hollywood actors/actresses. I don't claim that it was an ideal paper. But these days what I am seeing is TOI doesn't have anything worth reading.
Try retrospecting Time, we had 'A confession of a bar dancer', so called bold interview with a girl who left her home in her early ages with a man whom she though she loved, a new metro sexual man... the list goes on. My question is , is this a real India? Is this what we think when we dream of a modern India?
One more thing I feel contradictory is the news that we see in Pune Times. Now what does Pune have to do with Hollywood's current affairs?
I came across an editorial of Lokmat, a Marathi newspaper. There was some comment from Dr. P.C. Alexander. I don't remember the actual wording, it was about the non-sense news that media is spreading these days.
I think, instead of wasting those soft pages on pairs of Aishwarya-Abhishek, Liz Hurley-Arun Nair, better talk of something really useful.
Let people know that there are mavericks out here who devoted their lives for some good cause. Let them know that there are still some figure who stood tall against throughout their fight and whom we see as a source of inspiration.
I don't know if TOI have a time for its introspection, but for now I am switching over from 'The Times of India' to 'The Hindu'. At least, I could read some good Edi's here.

5 comments:

Swati said...

I whole heartedly agree about the content being really bad in ToI supplements. However wrt editorial - I feel the editorial pages do contain some good articles very often. Like last week, I read articles from Jug Suraiya, Anil Dharker, Jayant N. and found them to be very good - which analysed the current situation (cricket, education) very well.

Also Swaminomics, jugular vein by Jug Suraiya, Bacchi Karkaria write some truely good articles (in Sunday Times) which are hard to miss. Especially Swaminomics last to last week - regarding how 4 wheelers were causing problems and losses was a fantastic read and a true eye opener.

These few things actually prompt me to buy ToI, although I am not a fan of ToI. Infact @home, Mumbai we buy Hindu, Economic Times, Mumbai mirror, Udayavani (Kannada paper) daily and ToI only on Sunday.. It is hard to miss Swaminomics :-)

Onkar said...

Thats true about Sunday Times, but what about the editorials in week-days? What about their content? I see no point in reading The Pune Times everyday...

Swati said...

Oh yes, Pune Times is not to be read (except horoscope.. tp ke liye, word scrabble, Guess the phrase, Garfield etc comics) there is nothing worthwhile.. !
Atleast Bombay Times has 'real' page 3 stars, Pune Times lacks that too... The photos splashed are of anonymous people, who I bet are lesser known than me too !!It doesn't even live upto be a 'Page 3' irrespective of whether one wishes to read or not!!

Yes, editorials in weekdays are good just once in a while.

But Sunday Times, I wouldn't miss out. I always find atleast 1/2 hour of good reading in it.

Hey just an afterthought.. do you read Rajdeep Sardesai's blogs?
This is latest..
http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/rajdeepsardesai/1/37530/death-of-a-game.html

Onkar said...

No, but I will try it. Swati, can you give me the URL of your blog? I have one http://swati.blog-city.com/. Do you have any other account for blogging?

Anonymous said...

I don't blog on blogger.. :-) Infact its been months since I blogged even at blogcity. Btw, I soon plan to change over to livejournal. Blog-city is going to be paid and also I found livejournal to be better (you can say a friend sold the idea to me, that it is better :-))